Updegraff 

i        O 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


Tin:  UNRARY 

SIYY   OF  CALIFORNIA 

LUS  AN(;KLi:S 


STRAYED  REVELLERS 

A  Nove/  of  Modernistic  Truth  and 
Intruding  War 

BY 

ALLAN   UPDEGRAFF 


I  didn't  know  Truth  was  such  an  invalid.  How  long  is  it  since 
she  could  only  take  the  air  in  a  closed  carriage  .  .  .  ? 

The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table 

Half-engaged  in  the  soil,  pawing  to  get  free,  man  needs  all  that 
can  be  brought  to  disengage  him.  .  .  .  If  war  .  .  .  can 
set  his  dull  nerves  throbbing,  and  by  loud  taps  on  the  tough 
chrysalis  can  break  its  walls  and  let  the  new  creature  emerge 
erect  and  free,— make  way  and  sing  paean  ! — EMERSON 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY    HOLT   AND   COMPANY 
1918 


COPYRIGHT,  TQIS, 

BV 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


THE    QUINN    A     BODEN    CO.    PRESS 


TO 

HIS  NIBS 

With  regret  that  he  won't  care  for  it- 
at  least  not  for  some  years. 


2042080 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  A  Preamble — in  the  Course  of  Which  a  Mod 
ern  Young  Lady  Arrives,  Makes  a  Conquest, 
and  Starts  to  Climb  a  Mountain  ...  3 

II  Henry  Meets  a  Person  Who  Reminds  Him  of 
the  Days  When  He  was  Fresh  as  a  Cucum 
ber  Picked  in  the  Mornin'  ....  12 

III  Some  Mountains,  a  Valley,  a  Village,  a  View, 

and  a  Very  Fiat  Announcement     ...       29 

IV  During  Which  Several  Confidences  Are  Placed 

in  an  Appreciative  Corner       ....       47 

V  Mr.  Hooghtyling  Endeavors  to  Apply  Brakes 
to  the  Truth,  but  Decides  That,  All  Things 
Considered,  You  Can't  Tell  from  the  Looks 
of  a  Frog  How  Fur  It'll  Jump  ...  69 

VI  Truth,  After  Much  Knocking  About,  Is  Wel 
comed  by  an  Ultra-Modern  Young  Man — 
Although  Not,  Perhaps,  for  Her  Own  Un 
adulterated  Sake 97 

VII  A  Detail,  Founded  on  an  Old  Romance,  Mod 
ernized  and  Improved  by  Miss  Clotilde 
Hooghtyling 121 

VIII  A  Poor  Invalid,  Lured  Once  More  from  Her 
Closed  Carriage,  Is  Crushed  to  Earth,  Bun 
dled  in  Again,  and  Sent  Packing  by  Ethel  .  151 

IX     Cy  Wetmore  Gave  a  Party,  and  All  the  Bucks 

Were  There 182 

X     A  Watch  in  the  Night 210 


vi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOE 

XI  Henry  Hooghtyling,  While  Continuing  to  Vin 
dicate  His  Right  to  Be  Classed  with  the 
Ultra-Modernists,  Gets  Rid  of  Some  Phi 
losophy  on  Cows  vs.  Heifers — and  Ethel 
Camouflages  Another  Stray  »  253 

XII     Modern  Love:  At  Least,   One  Phase  of  the 

Common,  or  Conversational,  Variety  of  It  .     311 

XIII  A  Lucky  Chapter,  in  Which  Two  Strays, 
not  only  from  Manhattan  Maskings,  Cha 
rades,  and  Amateur  Theatricals  but  from 
Some  Recent  More  Fundamental  Revels  of 
Their  Own,  Sit  upon  the  Brow  of  a  Moun 
tain,  Wondering  About  the  World  Beneath 
and  Counseling  How  Best  to  Bear  a  Noble 
Part,  Seeing  that  Hell  Has  Manifestly 
Cracked  Open  Across  Several  Continents  .  369 


STRAYED  REVELLERS 


STRAYED    REVELLERS 

CHAPTER  I 

A  PREAMBLE— IN  THE  COURSE  OF  WHICH  A  MODERN 

YOUNG  LADY  ARRIVES,  MAKES  A  CONQUEST,  AND 

STARTS  TO  CLIMB  A  MOUNTAIN 

CLOTILDE — Clotilde  Smith  Westbrook :  it  needed  neither 
a  member  of  the  Vibrationist  Cult,  nor  anyone  with  more 
than  a  faint  interest  in  Nomatism,  to  discover  that  there 
might  be  a  great  deal  in  her  name  as  considered  in  com 
bination  with  the  person  to  whom  it  applied.  Clotilde's 
name  suited  her.  That  may  have  been  because  she  had 
grown  up  to  fit  it,  as  several  little  groups  of  serious 
thinkers  would  maintain,  or  because  similar  circumstances 
had  determined  both  herself  and  her  name,  thus  making 
them  harmonious,  or,  possibly,  and  as  more  to  the  liking 
of  skeptical  Materialists,  it  was  an  accident.  Clotilde 
herself  had  passed  through  at  least  three  theories  to 
arrive,  with  crashing  suddenness,  at  the  accident  one. 
At  any  rate,  there  were  certain  suggestions  of  French 
esprit,  a  certain  determined,  almost  obtrusive,  common 
ness,  and  a  basic  high-breeding  common  both  to  Clotilde 
and  her  name. 

It  was  a  name,  too,  that  might  have  suggested  to  dis 
cerning  Nomatists  that  its  bearer  would  create  some  stir 
in  her  comings  and  goings.  If  it  did,  so  much  the  better 
for  the  discerning  Nomatists.  It  is  certain  that  the 

3 


4  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

rumor  of  her  impending  arrival  in  Woodbndge  spread 
through  the  community  with  a  swiftness  that  implied 
importance.  The  rumor  stirred  up,  in  the  words  of  the 
cleverest  Woodbridgian  gossip,  "  a  good  deal  of  agog-i- 
ness,  especially  among  the  under-married  males." 

"  I  love  Clotilde — I  suppose  she'll  sweep  grandly  up  to 
the  Inn  in  a  ten-thousand-dollar  roadster  and  begin  to 
start  sensations  at  the  rate  of  seven  a  day — well,  Wood- 
bridge  has  been  rather  slow  of  recent  date,"  added  this 
same  dispenser  of  the  cleverest  brand  of  Woodbridge 
gossip,  and  rested  on  her  honors,  secure  in  the  faith 
that  she  would  have  time  for  several  more  bon  mots 
in  the  stage-wait  between  Clotilde's  heralding  and  her 
appearance. 

But  Clotilde  side-tracked  this  threatened  cleverness  by 
appearing  that  same  afternoon,  so  unostentatiously  as  to 
suggest  an  incognito,  on  the  lowly  old  horse-drawn  stage 
that  connects  Woodbridge  with  West'  Beacon,  the  rail 
road,  and  other  troubles  of  the  outside  world.  She  did 
not  get  out  at  the  Inn ;  while  the  several  other  passengers 
unloaded,  she  kept  her  place  on  the  back  seat  of  the  old 
surrey,  with  her  head  bowed  a  little,  and  her  eyes  looking 
out  from  just  below  the  brim  of  her  wide  blue  summer 
hat:  looking  out,  indeed,  as  if  she  would  have  done  more 
than  bow  her  head  to  escape  recognition  if  such  conceal 
ment  hadn't  been  beneath  her  dignity. 

"  Was  you  wanting  to  go  somewheres,  Miss  ?  "  asked 
the  anomalously  youthful  and  sprightly  driver  of  the  old 
and  rheumatic  rig,  returning  from  a  whirl  of  making 
change,  giving  directions,  sorting  out  baggage. 

Clotilde  nodded.  "  I  want  to  go  up  to  Henry 
Hooghtyling's." 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  5 

"  Yes'm !  Take  you  right  down  to  the  barn  and  hook 
onto  a  lighter  rig." 

"Is  it  far?" 

"  Yes'm.  Not  very.  'Bout  two  miles.  Half-way  up 
Teyce  Ten  Eyck  Mountain." 

"All  right,"  agreed  Clotilde  restlessly.  But  by  the 
time  they  drew  up  before  the  stage-owner's  big  purple 
barn,  she  had  changed  her  mind.  "  I  think — "  she  said, 
coming  to  earth  with  a  springy  little  leap  that  set  her 
filmy  summer  clothes  and  her  wide  blue  hat-brim  bob 
bing  :  "  I  think  I'll  just  walk  up — it's  a  fine  afternoon  for 
a  walk.  I  can  leave  my  suitcase  with  you,  can't  I — and 
you  can  send  it  right  up  if  I  telephone  for  it?  " 

"  Why — yes'm."  The  youth  was  as  crestfallen  as  if 
he  had  been  denied  a  dance.  "  But  say — the  Hooghty- 
lings  ain't  got  no  telephone,"  he  added,  brightening. 
"  The  nearest  one's  down  to  the  Brookses'.  That's  near 
a  mile.  I  could  drive  you  right  up — " 

"  I  think  I'll  walk,  anyway.  You  see,  they're  not  ex 
pecting  me.  I  wonder  if  you  happen  to  know  whether 
they  take  boarders  ?  " 

"  I  can't  say's  I  ever  heard  they  did.  They  live  quite 
a  ways  from  the  village.  But  most  anybody  around 
here'll  take  boarders."  Crestfallen  once  more,  with  his 
blue  Irish  eyes  fastened  on  Clotilde's  brown  Gallic 
ones,  he  kept  up  a  desultory  process  of  unhitching. 
Clotilde  considered  the  matter,  and  him.  He  was  pink- 
cheeked,  snub-nosed,  freckled,  Reilly  by  patronymic,  and 
"  Skeeter  "  by  common  name.  The  promise  of  a  new 
motor-bus,  his  to  pilot  and  tinker  with,  had  kept  him  for 
the  past  six  months  a  slave  to  the  two  old  nags  and  the 
rickety  surrey  before  him.  He  often  went  about  with 


6  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  vacant  eyes  and  relaxed  features  of  one  busy  with 
inward  visions,  visions,  no  doubt,  in  which  all  the  parts 
and  passions  of  a  brand  new  motor-bus  were  revealed. 
Just  then,  however,  it  appeared  that  another  vision 
eclipsed  even  the  bus. 

"  It  wouldn't  cost  you  nothin' — if  I  was  to  drive  you 
part  o'  the  way,"  he  hazarded.  "  Glad  to  do  that  for  our 
customers.  It's  a  pretty  steep  climb  up  there." 

But  he  made  the  offer  without  much  show  of  hope,  and 
was  not  surprised  by  Clotilde's  polite  refusal.  He 
gawked  after  her,  head  turned  over  his  shoulder,  as 
she  walked  out  along  the  driveway  to  the  main  road. 

She  walked  more  springily,  even  if  her  brows  wore  a 
little  frown  of  irritation,  because  she  knew  he  was  watch 
ing  her.  She  was  nearing  the  time  of  full  bloom,  well 
past  that  first  burgeoning  when  to  be  gaped  at  had  been 
her  elixir  of  youth ;  all  things  considered,  she  really  didn't 
like  to  attract  stares.  Very  emphatically  to  herself,  and 
a  bit  too  frankly  to  others,  she  asserted  the  sickly  innocu- 
ousness  of  glances  that,  as  long  as  youth  is  youth,  will 
have  a  meaning,  will  make  the  average  recipient,  male 
or  female,  carry  chin  a  little  higher,  add  a  little  self- 
consciousness  to  eyes  and  stride.  Since  she  could  not 
altogether  suppress  these  natural  reactions,  her  too  frank 
and  frequent  complaints  about  being  stared  at  were  mis 
interpreted;  and,  by  force  of  this  very  misinterpretation, 
she  lost  her  frankness  a  little,  became  a  little  affected  in 
her  attitude.  This  slight  affectation,  an  outgrowth  of 
her  rebellion  against  all  affectations,  was  an  important 
part  of  the  character  she  had  been  born  with,  attained, 
and  had  thrust  upon  her.  She  was  too  determined  to  be 
frank  to  really  attain  any  complete  frankness;  often 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  7 

enough  her  efforts  made  her  downright  untrue  to  herself 
and  to  young-womanhood  in  general.  Because  she  was 
so  determinedly  true  to  the  truth  as  she  saw  it,  she  was 
as  thorough  a  poseuse  in  her  way  as  any  demure  and 
artful  little  minx  of  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  It 
was  in  intention  rather  than  in  achievement  that  she 
registered  an  advance. 

Out  on  the  open  road,  beyond  the  serried  village 
houses,  she  lost  both  her  self-consciousness  and  her  over 
emphasized  irritation  against  the  cause  of  it.  With  eyes 
for  frank  appreciation  of  the  checkered  country,  here  a 
little  farmhouse  surrounded  by  fields  and  wood-lots  in 
the  general  pattern  of  a  crazy-quilt,  there  the  roof  of  an 
artist's,  metal-worker's,  weaver's,  writer's,  or  mere 
summerite's  bungalow  showing  amidst  tree-branches,  she 
gave  herself  up  to  the  joys  offered  by  a  good  walk  when 
one  has  a  body  and  spirit  suited  to  it. 

She  walked,  she  did  not  trip  along.  Heel  and  toe  took 
the  ground  naturally,  and  there  was  a  slight  relaxing  of 
the  knee  at  the  beginning  of  each  sizable  stride  that 
sent  her  forward  in  a  shockless  rhythm  of  motion.  Her 
arms  swung,  and  her  shoulders  swayed,  even  her  head 
nodded  a  little,  keeping  time,  adding  ease  and  balance, 
in  a  way  so  free  and  natural  that  strict  deportmentalists 
might  have  dubbed  it  "slouchy"  or  "mannish."  There 
was  no  sense  of  restriction  either  in  movement  or  clothes. 
All  her  habiliments  seemed  chosen  with  an  eye  to  the 
grace  and  efficiency  and  freedom  they  might  contribute 
to  the  person  inside. 

There  were  her  shoes,  cocoa-brown  in  color,  solid  and 
shapely  without  being  heavy,  firmly  heeled  to  the  height 
of  not  more  than  an  inch,  fitting  with  the  neatness  of  a 


8  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

glove  from  toe  to  ankle,  modernistic  American  triumphs 
of  a  long-bungled  art.  Her  suit,  of  dark  tan  pongee, 
lacked  any  suggestion  either  of  the  variously  popular 
draped-tablecloth  or  sheath  effects  in  ladies'  wear.  The 
perfect-fitting  box  coat  swung  open,  showing  the  front 
of  a  simple  white-silk  shirtwaist,  ornamented  with  an 
orange-and-blue  spray  of  silk  embroidery  on  either  side 
of  the  row  of  small  pearl  buttons  down  the  front;  its 
large  Dutch  collar  was  open  at  the  throat,  and  a  blue- 
edged  handkerchief  peeped  conveniently  from  the  breast 
pocket.  Her  wide  hat,  of  artfully  braided  straw,  smoky- 
blue  in  color,  shaped  like  a  small  toadstool  superimposed 
on  a  larger  one,  was  saved  from  severity  by  three  woolen 
pompons,  shading  from  pale  yellow  at  the  edges  to  burnt 
orange  centers,  set  at  an  angle  that  might  have  been 
described  as  three-quarters  front.  It  covered  her  head 
from  the  hair-line  on  her  forehead  to  the  nape  of  her 
neck,  and,  when  she  looked  up,  formed  a  strikingly 
effective  dark  frame  for  her  color  and  keen  lines  of  her 
striking  face. 

Even  Clotilde's  enemies,  with  almost  a  baker's  dozen 
of  whom  she  was  variously  troubled  and  blessed,  ad 
mitted  that  she  had  a  striking  face.  It  displayed  most 
of  the  elements  that  go  to  suggest  "  striking  "  as  applied 
to  a  face — an  alertness,  a  purpose  fulness,  a  definite- 
ness  of  line,  and  a  certain  not  unhealthy  discontent:  at 
least  a  discontent  not  especially  unhealthy  when  revealed 
in  youthful  half-realization  of  self  and  of  self's  world. 
Her  cheekbones  were  a  bit  high,  and  there  was  a  bit  too 
much  of  a  hollow  at  the  temples,  caused  by  the  sweeping 
width  of  the  forehead  above,  to  permit  her  facial  contour 
to  display  the  much-prized  perfect  oval,  but  she  gained 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  9 

in  character  for  the  loss  in  perfection.  Her  eyebrows, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  perfect,  perhaps  her  only  perfect 
feature:  full,  delicately  penciled  in  dark  brown,  contain 
ing  as  adequate  a  representation  of  the  artist's  "  line  of 
beauty  "  as  is  often  found  in  nature.  Clement  Townes, 
the  Greenwich  Village  poet,  had  once  emulated  Shake 
speare's  hero  by  writing  a  sonnet  "  To  His  Lady's  Eye 
brows."  This  was  immediately  before  Clotilde  threw 
him  over  with  a  clatter  that  was  heard  even  in  the  far 
corners  of  the  earth,  including  Woodbridge.  Undoubt 
edly  his  dragging  of  Clotilde's  eyes  into  the  sextet  of  a 
sonnet  that  had  started  out  to  be  about  eyebrows  had 
something  to  do  with  it.  "  Why,"  demanded  Clotilde, 
"  did  he  say  my  eyes  were  felinely  luminous  in  the  dark? 
He's  never  even  seen  them  in  the  dark !  "  Someone  later 
suggested  that  this  was  probably  for  the  sake  of  a  rhyme. 
But  by  that  time  it  was  too  late;  Clement  had  taken  his 
shattered  life  in  his  hands  and  gone  to  France  to  drive 
an  ambulance.  Thus  he  escaped,  at  least,  any  danger 
from  the  draft,  which,  in  spite  of  a  doubtful  physique, 
might  have  garnered  him  into  the  coarse  associations  of 
Yaphank. 

Clotilde's  eyes  were  certainly  not  feline,  though  they 
might  well  have  seemed  luminous  to  any  cavalier  for 
tunate  enough  to  behold  them  in  the  dark.  They  were 
a  warm,  rich  brown,  with,  oddly  enough,  no  variation 
of  color  in  either  iris:  French  eyes  both  by  appearance 
and  by  rightful  inheritance  from  her  mother,  although 
without  one  small  iota  of  the  coquetry  that  is  commonly 
supposed  to  be  inseparable  from  the  French  eye  feminine. 
Their  wide-open,  steady,  penetrating  frankness  was 
almost  alarming.  "  Whenever  Clotilde  looks  at  me,"  once 


io  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

commented  the  cleverest  Woodbridgian  gossip,  "  I  always 
think  she's  on  the  point  of  revealing  the  darkest  secrets 
of  her  soul  or  demanding  to  know  mine ! "  However,  at 
another  time,  the  same  authority,  who  possessed  the  attri 
bute  of  greatness  of  not  fearing  apparent  contradictions, 
was  moved  to  declare :  "  Clotilde  reminds  me  of  a  perfect 
kid — one  of  these  awfully  conscientious,  awfully  well- 
brought-up  kids,  you  know.  She  has  a  way  of  looking 
at  you  just  like  one — as  if  she'd  never  done  anything  in 
God's  world  to  conceal.  Honestly,  I  love  Clotilde !  " 

In  all  of  which  personal  analysis,  both  expressed  and 
implied,  Woodbridge's  social  oracle  maintained  her  repu 
tation  for  astuteness.  There  was  something  kiddish 
about  Clotilde,  something  especially  kiddish  as  she  strode 
along  the  winding  country  road,  face  uplifted,  tinted  with 
peach-blow  color  in  either  cheek,  eyes  bland  and  un 
troubled  as  an  infant's,  red  lips  parted  over  even  white 
teeth,  her  whole  slender  body  thrown,  with  a  kind  of 
kiddish  abandon,  into  the  business  of  getting  ahead. 
"  Boyish  "  she  might  have  been  called,  not  only  for  the 
clean-cut  freshness  of  her  face,  but  for  the  slimness  of 
her  hips,  the  unexaggerated  curves  of  her  uncorseted 
waist,  the  flatness  of  her  bosom  on  which  the  round 
little  twin  promontories  were  hardly  noticeable  even  when 
the  wind  threw  her  into  momentary  reliefs  suggestive  of 
the  Winged  Victory :  "  boyish "  she  might  have  been 
called  if  it  be  permitted  to  speak  of  a  delicately-featured, 
perfect-complexioned,  smooth-limbed  boy  as  "  girlish." 
Lacking  this  permission,  the  "  boyish  "  must  at  once  be 
withdrawn,  and  "  finely  girlish  "  substituted.  Essentially 
she  was  that,  finely,  athletically,  delicately  girlish,  with 
the  girlishness  which  women  of  her  general  type  have  no 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  11 

difficulty  in  keeping  beyond  the  twenty-four  years  which 
she  frankly,  and  truthfully,  owned. 

Something  of  all  this,  and  a  subtle  infinitude  more, 
was  Clotilde  as  she  walked  in  beauty,  not  like  the  justly- 
celebrated  night,  but  rather  like  the  clear  and  crisp 
September  early  afternoon,  up  the  zigzagging  brown 
road  that  leads  past  Henry  Hooghtyling's  farm  on  Teyce 
Ten  Eyck  Mountain. 


CHAPTER  II 

HENRY  MEETS  A  PERSON  WHO  REMINDS  HIM  OF  THE 

DAYS  WHEN  HE  WAS  FRESH  AS  A  CUCUMBER 

PICKED  IN  THE  MORNIN' 

ONE  of  Mr.  Hooghtyling's  chief  occupations  was  resting 
his  bones.  He  did  it  with  regret,  sandwiching  numerous 
chores  and  even  an  occasional  complete  day's  labor  in 
between,  but,  time  and  villainously  hard  work  in 
the  bluestone  quarries  of  the  mountainside  having  re 
duced  him  to  much  the  physical  state  of  a  broken-down 
work-horse,  he  had  no  choice.  "  I'm  not  good  for 
nawthin'  no  more,"  he  used  to  complain  when,  after  a 
round  of  labors  that  would  have  sent  a  youth  like 
Clement  Townes  to  the  hospital,  he  was  forced  to  "  set 
for  a  spell."  "  No,  Henry  really  ain't  good  for  naw 
thin',"  Mrs.  Hooghtyling  would  admit  with  a  sigh,  echo 
ing  her  spouse  in  that  as  in  most  other  opinions. 

On  the  afternoon  of  Clotilda's  arrival,  Henry  had  been 
forehandedly  struggling  with  his  winter  wood  supply. 
Half  an  hour's  vigorous  swinging  of  the  ax  in  his  wood 
shed  was  "  spelled  "  by  five  minutes  of  rest,  meditation, 
and  pipe-smoking  on  his  front  porch.  He  was  on  his 
way  to  one  of  these  rests,  slouching  past  the  house  with 
the  general  air  of  an  exhausted  but  hurried  turkey  gob 
bler,  when  Clotilde  appeared,  a  hundred  yards  down  the 
road. 

Henry,  forgetting  his  breeding,  stopped  to  stare  at  her; 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  13 

she  was  worth  staring  at  because  any  phenomenon  in  the 
way  of  a  stranger  on  the  road  was  worth  that,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  and  Henry's  old  eyes,  which  couldn't  dis 
tinguish  large  print  near  at  hand,  were  keen  as  a  squirrel's 
at  a  hundred  yards.  Almost  at  once  he  remembered 
himself  and  resumed  his  rapid  slouch  toward  the  front 
porch,  glancing  at  her  only  casually,  with  a  certain  de 
tachment,  such  as  any  other  proper  gentleman  might  have 
displayed  when  confronted  with  the  vision  of  flushed 
youth,  good  clothes,  and  girlish  beauty  that  Clotilde  pre 
sented  at  that  moment. 

He  sat  down  in  the  comfortable  little  armless  rocker 
that  was  waiting  for  him  on  the  porch,  cleared  his  throat 
sharply,  glanced  once  more  at  Clotilde,  and  fumbled  in 
the  pocket  of  his  overall  jacket  for  his  pipe.  She  was 
fifty  yards  nearer  now,  but  still  distinct  as  a  cameo  in 
his  vision.  He  turned  his  eyes  away,  brought  out  his 
aged  briar  pipe,  and  stared  ominously  at  the  south-west 
horizon :  he  might  have  distinguished  signs  of  an  impend 
ing  cyclone  in  that  expanse  of  bland  and  fleckless  blue. 

When  Clotilde  entered  his  gate,  fifty  feet  from  him,  he 
was  engaging  in  an  attempt  to  light  an  empty  pipe  with 
a  match  that  he  had  forgotten  to  scratch.  However,  he 
got  himself  enough  in  hand,  by  the  time  she  stood  before 
him,  to  scratch  the  match,  suck  the  flame  into  his  pipe- 
bowl,  and  discover  that  it  was  empty. 

"Are  you  Mr.  Henry  Hooghtyling  ?  "  asked  Clotilde; 
she  had  come  slowly  that  last  hundred  yards,  and  yet  she 
was  flushed  to  the  temples,  breathless,  peculiarly  com 
pressed  about  the  eyes  and  about  her  faintly  smiling 
mouth. 

He  had  risen  at  her  approach;  he  stood  holding  his  pipe 


14 

in  one  hand  and  his  red-and-blue  paper  of  "  Mechanic's 
Delight  "  smoking  tobacco  in  the  other.  "  That's  who  I 
am — most  gin'ly,"  he  admitted,  clumsily  pressing  the 
tobacco  against  his  coat-front  so  that  he  could  get  a 
thumb  and  finger  into  it.  He  was  as  calm,  now,  and  as 
contemptuously  amused  by  his  recent  perturbation  as  if 
he  had  expected  a  cyclone  out  of  a  clear  sky.  "  Though 
some  folks  calls  me  '  Hen  Hoot '  for  short." 

Quite  suddenly,  as  if  it  had  been  a  thing  determined 
on  before  and  carried  out  according  to  program  rather 
than  demanded  by  the  immediate  circumstances,  she  held 
out  her  hand.  "  I'm  very  glad  to  meet  you !  "  she  said. 

Henry,  after  taking  plenty  of  time  to  put  back  into  its 
paper  the  wad  of  long-cut  he  had  gathered  up,  shook 
hands  with  her.  "  Set  down,  won't  you  ? "  he  asked, 
backing  away  a  little  from  the  old  rocker,  returning  finger 
and  thumb  to  the  paper  of  tobacco.  "  I  guess  you're 
ready  to  set,  if  you  been  walkin'  up  that  old  hill.  That's 
a  fair  comfortable  chair." 

Clotilde  protested :  "  Oh,  I'll  just  sit  on  the  edge  of 
the  porch — " 

"  They's  plenty  more  chairs  in  the  house,  if  I  wanted 
one,"  said  Henry;  "  but  it's  my  idea  to  set  right  here  on 
the  edge  of  the  porch,  where  my  strong  old  pipe  won't 
bother  you — unless  you're  particular  sensitive — " 

"  Oh,  no ;  but  I  don't  want  to  take — " 

"  Well,  some  ladies  is,  and  I  don't  blame  'em."  Henry 
sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  porch,  tamping  the  old  pipe 
with  finger  and  thumb.  "  I  never  smoked  much  till  I 
got  so  I  wa'n't  good  for  nawthin'  else."  Clotilde  sat 
down  in  the  rocker;  her  first  tense-eyed  appraisal  of  him 
had  given  place  to  a  quiet  survey,  an  air  of  generally 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  15 

taking  him  in.  "  When  a  man  ain't  good  for  nawthin' 
else,  I  don't  suppose  smokin'  does  him  any  harm;  still, 
if  they's  objections — ladies  present — " 

Clotilde  said :  "  Oh,  a  good  many  ladies  smoke  nowa 
days — cigarettes,  you  know."  She  said  it  as  if  expecting 
to  deliver  a  shock. 

"  Oh,  sure;  and  I've  knowed  'em  to  smoke  pipes,  and 
cigars,  too."  Henry  lit  his  pipe  and  puffed  most  un- 
shockedly  into  space.  "  My  grandmother  used  to  smoke 
a  pipe,  when  she  got  old;  said  it  helped  her  asthmy.  And 
there's  Mrs.  Johnson,  she's  Wallace  Jones'  housekeeper 
down  on  the  Shady  road,  she  likes  her  cigar  as  well  as 
any  man  I  ever  see.  But,  o'  course,  the  artusses  round 
the  village,  both  men  and  women,  mostly  sticks  to  cig 
arettes.  Well,  if  a  person  ain't  got  a  strong  stummick, 
cigarettes  ain't  so  apt  to  make  'em  sick.  Myself,  I  like 
cigars  pretty  good,  though  not's  well's  a  pipe,  but  I  never 
did  care  for  cigarettes." 

"  But  do  you  think  it's  right  for  women  to  smoke?" 
Clotilde  asked,  almost  too  plainly  pumping  him. 

Henry  looked  judicial :  not  assertively  judicial,  but  as 
one  feeling  the  responsibility  of  delivering  an  opinion  that 
might  touch  the  personal  beliefs  of  the  person  to  whom 
he  delivered  it.  "  Well,"  he  ruminated,  "  I  always  did 
think  that  a  woman  smokin'  a  cigar  was  goin'  it  a  bit 
strong — a  bit  straw-ong."  He  smacked  his  thin  lips  over 
the  savor  of  his  pun.  "  Nor  I  can't  say's  I  ever  fancied 
the  looks  of  a  woman  smokin'  a  pipe;  but  all  the  women 
I  ever  knew  smoked  pipes  took  to  these  here  old  cob 
pipes,  and  they  was  old  women,  and  not  much  on  looks, 
anyway.  Myself,  I  always  like  a  briar  pipe." 

He  puffed  his  briar,  a  straight-stemmed,  rubber-bitted, 


16  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

black-burned  relic  of  years  of  indulgence,  and  ruminated 
further. 

"  If  women  has  got  to  smoke,  they  might  better  smoke 
cigarettes,  wouldn't  you  say  ? "  he  resumed  cautiously, 
and  proceeded  to  hedge :  "  Not  that  I'm  sayin'  a  woman 
has  got  any  call  to  smoke — any  more'n  a  man.  Now 
Ethel — she's  my  wife,  Ethel  is,  she  ain't  here  now,  she's 
just  run  up  the  road  to  my  daughter's,  but  she  ought  to 
be  back  pretty  soon : — but  what  I  was  goin'  to  say  was 
that  Ethel  can't  stand  for  a  woman  smokin'  at  all,  no 
ways,  under  no  circumstances.  She'll  listen  to  reason, 
she'll  admit  they's  nawthin'  downright  agin'  it,  no  more 
than  they  is  agin'  it  for  a  man,  but  she  just  simply  can't 
stand  for  it,  and  when  a  person,  'specially  a  woman,  feels 
that  way — why,  you  might  as  well  quit.  Myself,  I  can't 
say's  I  feel  that  way  about  it — not  entirely." 

As  if  he  had  come  to  a  natural  break,  he  sat  silent, 
puffing,  surveying  the  wide-descending  expanse  of  coun 
try,  waiting  for  a  suggestion,  or  at  least  a  sign,  that 
further  remarks  would  be  agreeable.  Or  his  waiting 
might  have  been  interpreted  as  the  politest  of  hints  that 
his  fancy  had  lightly  turned  to  wood-cutting,  that  suffi 
cient  time  had  been  given  to  introductory  remarks,  that 
he  was  ready  for  his  visitor  to  explain  why  she  had 
visited. 

"  I've  been  so  interested  in  talking  to  you,"  said 
Clotilde,  "  that  I've  neglected  to  state  my  business." 

"Business?"  echoed  Henry,  showing  surprise  enough 
for  politeness,  interest  enough  to  stimulate  revealment. 
"  Well,  when  a  man's  young,  business  had  ought  to  come 
before  pleasure,  but  when  he  gets  old  I  don't  know  but 
what  pleasure  might's  well  come  before  business." 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  17 

Having  thus  greased  the  ways  so  that  business  might 
be  launched  without  shock  or  grating,  he  returned  to 
leisurely  contemplation  of  the  landscape.  From  where 
she  sat  Clotilde  had  a  good  silhouette  view  of  him,  and 
she  contemplated  him  with  a  fervor  that  put,  for  the 
moment,  business  and  its  well-greased  ways  out  of  her 
mind. 

He  was  a  sad-faced,  shriveled  man,  of  medium  stature. 
The  stray  locks  of  hair  that  escaped  from  beneath  his 
faded  old  green  felt  hat  showed  a  mingling  of  reddish 
and  white;  his  nose  was  thin,  sharp,  longish,  with  the 
hint  of  a  Dutch  dividing  line  at  the  tip;  there  was  a 
Dutch  hint,  too,  in  the  general  flatness  of  his  brown, 
lined,  and  weather-beaten  face.  His  eyes  were  a  faded 
gray,  a  little  rheumy  and  reddish  around  the  corners. 
A  sagging  grayish  mustache,  unevenly  trimmed  and 
longer  at  one  end  than  the  other,  evidence  of  his  poor 
eyesight  and  his  habit  of  trimming  it  himself,  curved 
downward  almost  to  the  level  of  his  smooth-shaven, 
bluish  chin.  Between  chin  and  the  tieless  collar  of  his 
black  gingham  shirt,  his  corded,  loose-skinned  neck  sug 
gested  the  wattles  of  the  tired  but  hurried  old  turkey 
gobbler  whose  method  of  locomotion  he  imitated.  Under 
the  Anglicized  name  of  "  Houghteling  "  he  had  relatives 
in  many  parts  of  the  United  States,  descendants  of  that 
same  Piet  Hooghtyling  who  had  established  a  saw-mill 
a  little  further  up  that  same  valley,  some  lifetimes  be 
fore.  Henry  still  treasured,  rather  for  use  than  for  any 
pride  of  ancestry,  a  handsaw  that  had  belonged  to  the 
first  Hooghtyling  over  from  Holland. 

"  When  a  man  gets  old  and  good  for  nawthin',  it  might 
just  as  well  be  pleasure  first  and  business  afterward,"  he 


i8  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

repeated,  thinking  of  his  neglected  wood-pile.  "  Just  as 
they  say  round  here,  'If  you  would  thrive,  rise  at  five; 
but  after  you've  thriven,  you  may  rise  at  seven.'  Just 
the  same,  a  time  comes  when  a  man  feels  more  like  get 
ting  up  at  seven,  or  six  anyway,  than  five,  makes  no 
difference  whether  he's  thriven  or  not. — But  don't  notice 
me ;  I  do  a  lot  o'  talkin' ;  I  don't  mean  to  put  you  out  o' 
the  way  o'  statin'  your  business;  providin'  you  have  less 
time  to  be  sittin'  round  doin'  nawthin'  than  I  have." 

Clotilde  responded  with  pleasing  promptness :  "  Well 
— the  fact  is,  I  wanted  to  know,  Mr.  Hooghtyling, 
whether  you  couldn't  be  persuaded  to  take  me  for  a 
boarder  ?  " 

"  Ah — ho — oh  ?  "  He  raised  his  eyebrows,  dropped 
his  lower  jaw,  and  faced  her  with  insuppressible  astonish 
ment.  At  once  he  composed  his  features  and  looked 
away,  but  his  very  back  radiated  perturbation,  surprise, 
considerations  too  numerous  to  mention. 

Beginning  at  such  inward  questions  as  whether  she 
was  an  "  artuss  "  or  a  plain  summer  boarder,  whether 
she  had  just  arrived  or  hadn't  liked  the  last  place  where 
she'd  been  staying,  or — tremulous  thought — had  been 
forced  to  leave  for  some  bad  reason,  why  she  was  willing 
to  consider  a  boarding  place  so  far  from  the  village,  how 
much  she  might  pay,  whether  Ethel  would  consider  taking 
her,  especially  if  it  were  discovered  that  she  was  an 
"  artuss  "  and  smoked  cigarettes,  how  she  had  happened 
to  come  to  his  house,  and  who  had  recommended  her  to 
him,  he  arrived  at  last  at  a  question  polite  enough  to 
put  into  words : 

"  Walked  up  from  the  village?  " 

"  Yes — it  was  a  fine  walk,"  admitted  Clotilde,  sur- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  19 

prised  at  the  question  because  she  had  no  inkling  of  the 
maze  of  questions  out  of  which  it  had  been  chosen  as 
most  considerate. 

"  It's  a  pretty  stiff  walk,"  said  Henry.  "  Takes  my 
breath  now — can't  seem  to  git  my  wind  comin'  up  that 
old  hill.  But  the  day  was  when  I  could  go  to  the 
village'n  back  in  less'n  hour,  and  never  know  it." 

He  was  silent  again,  busy  with  unraveling  from  his 
mass  of  tangled,  and  not  altogether  polite,  considerations, 
another  end  that  might,  without  offense,  get  him  toward 
the  solution  of  the  great  problems  she  had  stirred  up. 

"  Come  in  on  the  stage  ?  "  he  asked  casually,  taking  a 
fresh  start,  scowling  at  his  own  bald  temerity,  and  yet 
bolstered  up  by  a  conviction  that  he  must  get  at  the 
heart  of  matters,  cost  what  it  might. 

:'  Yes — the  one-o'clock  stage,"  said  Clotilde.  She  had 
no  idea  of  his  drift;  to  her  peculiarly  frank  and  open 
mind  he  seemed  merely  to  be  maundering,  old  man's  way, 
unable,  after  the  manner  of  old  farmers,  to  come  to  the 
point.  She  wondered  why  he  didn't  ask  her  something 
about  herself:  why,  since  she  had  applied  for  lodgings, 
he  didn't  show  some  interest  in  the  matter. 

Henry  was  much  encouraged  by  his  success;  she  had 
come  by  the  stage,  she  had  not  left  another  boarding 
house  either  because  she  was  hard  to  please  or  because 
she  had,  for  some  regrettable  reason,  been  asked  to 
leave.  Beth  were  important  points.  Carefully  he 
planned  his  next  advance. 

"  Woodbridge's  a  purty  nice  place — specially  for 
artusses — not?  "  he  asked.  "  Specially  in  the  fall?  " 

That  was  really  a  very  deep  question,  a  masterpiece  of 
a  question,  and  he  puffed  his  pipe  and  stared  into  vacancy 


20  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

with  much  self-satisfaction  after  he  had  put  it.  Her 
answer  to  that,  if  she  answered  with  anything  like  the 
fullness  that  any  loquacious  country  person  had  every 
right  to  expect,  would  involve  revelations  as  to  how  long 
she  expected  to  stay,  why  she  chose  to  enjoy  Wood- 
bridge's  fall  beauties  from  his  lonely  hillside  rather  than 
nearer  the  village,  verily  it  gave  her  the  best  of  openings 
to  admit  that  she  was  an  "  artuss." 

Clotilde  answered,  "  Yes,"  and  nothing  more.  He 
waited ;  he  was  disappointed.  He  passed  his  hand  across 
his  forehead,  racking  his  brains  to  think  of  another  open 
ing.  They  were  desperately  hard  to  get  anything  out  of, 
these  city  folks:  tongue-tied,  clammish,  secretive.  He 
scratched  a  match  with  unnecessary  force  and  relit  his 
pipe. 

Clotilde,  in  a  similar  distress,  sat  frowning  at  him. 
She  had  answered  his  last  question  shortly  because  she 
wanted  to  make  him  understand  that  she  wasn't  inter 
ested,  just  then,  in  Woodbridge  and  its  autumn  pretti- 
nesses.  She  was  interested  in  becoming  his  boarder,  and 
it  was  downright  callous  of  him  to  avoid  the  subject. 
How  slow,  stupid,  secretive,  tongue-tied,  clammish  these 
country  people  were!  Even  he,  Henry  Hooghtyling, 
who,  a  little  while  before,  had  given  her  solid  food  for 
admiration,  he  suffered  from  the  customary  country 
apathy  of  brain. 

She  plunged  at  the  point :  "  Excuse  me,  Mr.  Hooghty 
ling,  but  I'm  so  interested  in  getting  you  to  take  me  as 
a  boarder  that  I'd  like  to  get  that  settled  before  we  talk 
of  other  things.  Now,  please,  do  you  mind  if  we  just 
talk  about  that?" 

"  Why — ah — ho-oh ! — o'  course — I  was  just  tryin'  to 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  21 

kinda  lead — "  Henry  paused  in  mingled  surprise  and 
gratification  too  complicated  for  his  shades  of  expression. 

"  Well,  then,  I'll  just  tell  you  something  about  my 
self,"  Clotilde  hurried  on,  before  he  should  have  time  to 
introduce  another  and  wholly  unrelated  topic.  "  Don't 
you  want  to  know  something  about  me  before  you 
decide?" 

In  spite  of  his  eagerness  to  know  just  that,  Henry  was 
cautious  about  admitting  it;  it  seemed  to  imply  doubt 
of  a  lady's  desirability.  "  Well — now — "  he  hedged. 

"  Well,  I'm  an  art-student,  and  I've  visited  Wood- 
bridge  from  time  to  time,"  Clotilde  resumed,  not  to  be 
side-tracked.  "  I  know  a  lot  of  the  other  artists,  but  I 
don't  want  to  live  down  in  the  village  because  there's  so 
much  social  life — one  doesn't  get  a  chance  to  work — or 
think.  There's  another  good  reason  why  I  want  to  live 
up  here,  but  we  can  discuss  that  later.  I  want,  now,  just 
to  tell  you  what  sort  of  a  boarder  you'll  have.  I'd  need 
just  a  little  room,  with  a  north  window — or,  if  that's 
inconvenient,  maybe  you  could  fix  me  up  a  place  to  paint 
in  your  barn.  I'd  expect  just  the  kind  of  food  you're 
accustomed  to  have — and  I  promise  not  to  be  any  trouble. 
I'd  want  to  stay  for  two  months,  anyway — till  the  middle 
of  November.  I'd  want  to  pay  you  well,  too,  because  I 
have  plenty  of  money — more  than  I  have  any  right  to. 
Now,  then,  won't  you  please  take  me  in  ?  "  She  paused. 
"  And,  Oh,  yes,  my  name's  Clotilde  Westbrook — at  least 
Clotilde  Westbrook — "  She  broke  off  again,  more 
sharply  this  time,  looking  hard  at  Henry's  agitated  face. 
Henry  had  been  absorbing  intimate  personal  information 
faster  than  he  had  ever  done  in  his  life  before;  he  was 
quite  dazed  by  her  graceless,  mysterious  frankness. 


22  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

There  was  something  almost  horrible  about  her  naked 
admission  that  she  had  more  money  than  she  had  any 
right  to.  For  a  moment  he  looked  both  dazed  and 
horrified. 

Sudden  color  rushed  up  into  Clotilde's  cheeks  in  answer 
to  his  look.  "  Oh — I  didn't  think — you  might  know  the 
name — my  father — or — rather — "  Her  voice  caught  and 
tripped  over  the  words,  a  somewhat  cynical  if  startled 
light  was  in  her  eyes.  "  But,  anyway,  it's  nothing  to  get 
stirred  up  about !  "  she  added,  with  a  quick  change  of  air 
in  favor  of  calmness,  of  slight  amusement  at  them  both, 
and  waited  for  him  to  catch  up  with  her. 

Hooghtyling's  natural  Dutch  stolidity  descended  like  a 
curtain  over  his  face.  Stolidly  he  looked  away  across 
the  wide  valley,  beginning  to  gather  long  shadows  from 
the  lowering  sun.  Beneath  his  stolidity,  his  mind  was 
unusually  busy;  as  was  his  custom  with  any  important 
matter  he  didn't  understand,  he  began  to  pick  at  the  edges 
of  it,  to  settle  on  what  was  apparent,  and  to  call  up 
analogies  out  of  his  own  experience  to  explain  the  mean 
ing  of  what  was  dark.  In  his  philosophy  he  used  both 
the  inductive  and  deductive  methods,  and  his  hypotheses 
were  valuable  in  proportion  as  his  remembered  experience 
with  life  had  been  broad  and  deep.  Lacking  a  literary 
background,  he  relied  on  one  of  personalities  and  events. 

"  Name's  don't  count  for  much,"  he  announced,  after 
scarcely  a  full  minute  of  intellectual  co-ordination. 
"  Once  I  knew  the  son  of  a  man  that  was  hanged  for 
murder,  and  he  was  a  fine  boy,  though  he  did  keep 
mostly  to  himself."  He  looked  at  her  with  eyes  that 
were  speculative  and  friendly ;  plainly  he  offered  the  inci 
dent  as  a  personal  reassurance. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  23 

Her  ways  of  thought  were  so  much  more  stark  and 
graceless  than  his  own  that  it  was  some  little  time  before 
she  understood.  When  the  plain  import  of  his  words 
came  home  to  her,  she  was  surprised  and  amused  by  his 
mistake  rather  than  admiring  of  his  penetration.  She 
said :  "  Good  Heavens,  no — my  father — Mr.  Westbrook 
—didn't  murder  anybody !  " 

Henry,  cut  deep  by  her  flat,  frank,  graceless  reply,  ob 
jected  hastily :  "  Oh,  sure  not — sure  not !  I  just  thought 
they  might  a  been — some  little  thing — you  wantin'  to  git 
off  by  yourself — and  mentionin'  his  name — I  just  thought 
me  mentionin'  a  man  who'd  done  a  lot  worse — "  He 
relapsed  into  a  distressed  silence;  as  often  happened,  his 
power  of  expression  was  not  equal  to  the  fineness  of  his 
thought.  Any  real  conversation  with  him  was  sure  to 
be  full  of  hints  of  feelings  that  broke  through  language 
and  escaped. 

She  understood  that  she  had  hurt  him,  faintly  under 
stood  even  that  there  had  been  something  rather  fine 
about  his  attitude,  ridiculous  as  his  suspicion  might  have 
been,  and  set  about  soothing  him.  "  I'd  have  you  know 
Mr.  Westbrook  was  a  good  man — almost  too  good  a 
man,"  she  said  gently,  if  a  little  banteringly.  "  He  was 
an  Episcopal  minister — and  undoubtedly  he's  in  Heaven 
at  the  present  moment."  Henry,  without  glancing  at 
her,  stolidly  puffed  his  pipe;  his  attitude  might  have  sug 
gested  that  he  felt  small  sympathy  with  levity  at  the 
expense  of  a  dead  father.  Clotilde  felt  called  upon  to 
explain:  "  Excuse  me  if  I  speak  lightly  of  him;  he's  been 
dead  nearly  fifteen  years,  and  I  hardly  knew  him  even 
while  he  was  alive;  besides,  with  the  very  best  of  inten 
tions,  he  did  me  a  great  injury — partly,  no  dpubtt  because 


24  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

he  was  such  a  good  man."  There  was  considerable  sharp 
ness  in  this  half-revelation.  Henry  gave  no  sign  that  he 
wasn't  deaf.  Stolid  staring  and  pipe  smoking  obtained 
on  one  side,  and  slightly  piqued  waiting  on  the  other,  for 
a  good  two  minutes. 

"  But  we  seem  always  to  be  getting  off  the  point," 
protested  Clotilde  brightly,  in  an  effort  to  stir  up  Dutch 
stolidity.  "  You  haven't  told  me,  yet,  whether  you'll 
take  me  as  a  boarder." 

"  O'  course  I'll  have  to  talk  it  over  with  Ethel.  We 
might  let  you  have  an  answer  inside  two,  three  days." 
As  if  feeling  the  coolness  of  his  announcement,  he  soft 
ened  it  with :  "  Myself,  I  won't  put  no  objections  in  the 
way,  and  I  think  Ethel'll  be  willin'.  Since  the  children 
all  went,  she  ain't  got  much  to  do  but  keep  house,  do  a 
few  chores,  make  butter  and  preserves  and  such,  and  lay 
up  a  few  stone  walls." 

If  Clotilde  was  shocked  by  the  coolness  of  this,  or  for 
any  other  reason,  she  kept  her  comments  to  herself. 
Henry  seemed  to  feel  a  need  to  explain :  "  Of  course, 
some  folks  might  say  it  wasn't  natural  for  a  woman  to 
lay  stone,  but  Ethel,  she's  got  the  power  to  do  it,  and, 
myself,  I  always  say  a  woman  had  ought  to  be  let  to  do 
whatever  she's  able  to  do,  if  she  wants  to  do  it.  Ethel 
says  she'd  rather  lay  stone  walls  as  to  bake  bread,  not 
but  what  she  bakes  good  bread,  too."  He  waited,  testing 
the  atmosphere.  Clotilde  preserved  a  silence  that  would 
have  done  credit  to  his  own  enigmatic  Dutchiness. 
'  Tain't's  if  I  ever  urged  her  to  lay  stone,"  Henry  apolo 
gized;  "fact  is,  I  used  to  kinda  object — didn't  seem 
natural,  you  know.  But  she  could  do  it  well's  a  man, 
better'n  most,  and  I  ain't  said  nothin'  agin  it  for  quite 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  25 

some  time.  Just  because  she's  a  woman's  no  good 
reason  she  shouldn't  lay  stone  walls  if  she's  able  to,  and 
wants  to." 

His  strengthening  statements  suggested  a  challenge. 
Clotilde  said :  "  That's  precisely  what  I  think  about  it, 
Mr.  Hooghtyling — and  I  wish  more  men  had  your  good, 
sane  view  of  the  woman  question."  He  smiled  at  that, 
looking  at  her  with  more  warmth  than  he  had  displayed 
for  some  fifteen  minutes.  He  was  as  pleased  as  an  over 
grown  boy  by  any  show  of  praise,  Clotilde  noticed,  and 
began  to  understand  the  value  of  atmospheres  in  dealing 
with  him.  Her  own  natural  frankness  was  the  destruc 
tion  of  atmospheres;  it  came  a  little  hard  for  her  to  draw 
dissembling  shadows,  mists,  vague  mellow  auras  around 
their  relationship,  but  she  saw  that  she  would  have  to  do 
it  in  order  to  get  on  with  him. 

"What  a  wonderful  view  you  have  from  here!"  she 
said,  thinking  less  of  the  view  than  of  a  little  judicious 
pleasantness. 

He  rose  like  a  trout  to  proper  bait.  "  Yes,  wonderful ! 
— and  you  ought  to  see  it  when  the  hills  all  takes  on 
variegated  colors."  She  wondered  where  he  had  got 
"  variegated,"  and  remembered  that  it  was  a  favorite 
word  of  her  motherrs.  Henry  continued :  "  I  always  said, 
if  a  man  could  live  by  lookin',  they  wasn't  no  finer  place 
in  the  valley.  You  get  a  better  view  from  over  there  in 
that  corner  of  the  orchard."  He  pointed.  "  Might  be 
you'd  like  to  walk  over  and  see  it  ?  " 

"  I'd  love  to !  "  Clotilde  agreed,  warmed  by  a  feeling 
that,  at  last,  they  were  getting  on.  He  rose,  and  started 
off  on  his  rapid,  slouching  saunter,  without  waiting  for 
her.  She  recognized  this  as  only  a  token  of  natural 


26  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

diffidence  that  would  have  made  another  man  wait  for 
her  to  take  precedence,  and  hurried  up  to  his  side.  "  I'm 
really  in  love  with  this  place  already,"  she  said;  "you 
see  so  much  more  than  down  in  the  valley.  If  you  don't 
decide  to  take  me,  I'll  be  all  broken  up." 

He  looked  sidewise  at  her,  drawing  back  a  little, 
wrinkling  his  far-sighted  old  eyes,  so  that  he  could  see 
her  more  clearly,  and  all  his  face  was  reserved  apprecia 
tion.  "  I  shouldn't  wonder  but  what  Ethel'd  be  willin'," 
he  said,  and  his  announcement  had  the  air  of  a  bargain 
made  and  sealed. 

Clotilde  showed  proper  appreciation :  "  Oh,  I'm  glad 
you  think  she  will !  " 

"  But  you  gotta  take  into  consideration,"  he  hedged, 
"  that  it's  sure  some  climb.  Not  but  what  I  never  noticed 
it  when  I  was  your  age.  I  used  to  be  a  great  man  on 
the  walk — I  say  it  without  boastin',  no  man  around  here 
could  walk  with  me,  and  it's  nawthin'  but  the  truth." 

Clotilde  nodded  appreciatively,  edging  toward  his 
shoulder.  He  edged  away  in  the  opposite  direction,  be 
cause  he  couldn't  see  her  well  when  she  was  close,  and 
he  seemed  to  have  found  a  new  and  pleasant  occupation 
in  looking  at  her.  There  was  a  warmth,  a  peculiar  and 
reserved  warmth,  in  his  regard:  an  interest,  a  real  ad 
miration,  that  was  at  once  keen  and  impersonal. 

He  opened  the  crazy  little  picket  gate  to  let  her  into 
the  orchard,  reminiscing  garrulously :  "  Yes,  I  was  sure 
some  walker.  I  used  to  put  in  fourteen  hours  at  the 
quarries,  daylight  to  dark,  and  later  if  they  was  a  moon — 
seems  like  men  worked  harder  in  them  days  than  they  do 
now — then,  right  after  supper,  I'd  be  off  down  to  the 
village;  maybe  to  a  dance  or  somethin',  or  just  to  see  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  27 

girl.  Three  miles  there,  three  miles  back — it  was  naw- 
thin'  to  me.  I  could  sleep  most  o'  the  way  walkin'  back 
— prob'ly  you  think  that  sounds — " 

"  I  should  think  you'd  need  to  sleep!  "  said  Clotilde. 

"  Well,  I  could  do  it — just  let  my  feet  go  like  they  was 
a  team — seems  like  they'd  turn  out  for  people,  though  I 
wouldn't  see  'em  nor  hear  'em  when  they  called  out  to 
me — less'n,  o'  course,  they  hollered  right  loud.  Then  I'd 
wake  up — some  on  'em  used  to  make  fun  o'  me — sleepin' 
while  I  was  walkin' !  It  don't  sound  natural,  but  they 
was  weeks  when  that  was  'bout  all  the  sleep  I'd  get — 
walkin'  up  that  old  mountain  road — wish  I  had  a  penny 
for  ev'y  time  I've  done  it ! 

"  Through  the  snow  I  used  to  hike  it,  too — many's  the 
time  I've  gone  up  and  down  when  the  old  road  wasn't 
broke,  and  snow  up  to  my  middle.  What  a  young  man 
won't  do !  Them  was  the  days  when  the  first  artusses  got 
to  comin'  to  the  village.  Seein'  you  kinda  reminded  me 
of  'em.  They  made  quite  some  changes  hereabouts, 
although  in  them  days  they  didn't  wear  no  such  clothes 
as  they  do  now.  I  mean  the  girls  didn't.  The  men 
dress  just  about  the  same,  although  some  of  them  has 
took  to  sprucin'  up  a  good  deal,  too,  in  the  last  few 
years.  In  them  days  I  used  to  dress  'bout  as  well  as 
any  on  'em,  and  they  wasn't  many  could  follow  me  long 
when  they  got  me  to  take  'em  huntin'.  They  used  to  be 
lots  o'  foxes  and  black  bears  into  the  mountains  over 
beyond  the  village.  I  used  to  git  up  round  midnight  and 
give  the  artusses  all  the  huntin'  they  wanted,  and  git  back 
in  time  for  half  a  day  in  the  quarries." 

"  I  shouldn't  think  you  could  keep  that  sort  of  thing 
up  very  long,"  said  Clotilde. 


28  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"I  didn't  mind  it — I  et  it  alive!  'Twas  only  after 
ward,  after  I  got  married,  it  got  me.  Specially  when  the 
children  was  comin'  on.  Work  from  dark  to  dark  in  the 
quarries — no  derricks  in  them  days,  either,  all  liftin'  and 
rollin'  by  hand — and  doin'  the  housework  at  home — 
Ethel  was  awful  ailin',  near  died  many  a  time  durin'  them 
days,  for  all  she's  so  hearty  now — walkin'  for  the  doctor 
to  the  village — weren't  no  telephones  round  here  then — 
and  havin'  no  heart  for  walkin'  like  I'd  used  to  have.  A 
man  can  do  anything  long's  he's  got  a  heart  for  it. 
Coin'  it  like  that  for  near  eight  years — the  children  was 
always  ailin',  too,  well  as  Ethel,  we  lost  three  on  'em, 
not  countin'  Clarence,  still-born — well,  it  broke  me  down, 
I  got  a  cold  settled  on  my  lungs,  and  the  doctor,  he  said 
my  heart  was  bad,  too,  said  I  couldn't  never  do  no  more 
hard  work,  but  I  kep'  it  up  till  I  near  died,  and  I  ain't 
been  good  for  nawthin'  since. 

"  Seein'  you  come  up  the  road,"  apologized  Henry, 
"  got  me  started  on  all  this.  In  them  days,  before  I  got 
married,  seems  like  the  artusses  used  to  walk  the  roads 
more'n  they  do  now,  anyway  the  women  did.  I  re 
member  sittin'  of  a  Sunday  mornin'  on  the  old  porch 
back  there  and  watchin'  'em  go  by.  Them  was  the  days 
when  I  was  fresh  as  a  cucumber  picked  in  the  mornin'." 

They  came  to  the  far  corner  of  the  orchard  and  stopped 
to  look  at  the  view. 


CHAPTER  III 

SOME   MOUNTAINS,   A  VALLEY,  A   VILLAGE,  A  VIEW, 
AND  A  VERY  FLAT  ANNOUNCEMENT 

WHOEVER  has  taken  a  voyage  up  the  Hudson  must  re 
member  the  Kaatskill  Mountains.  They  are  a  dismem 
bered  branch  of  the  great  Appalachian  family,  and  are 
seen  away  to  the  west  of  the  river,  swelling  up  to  a 
noble  height,  and  lording  it  over  the  surrounding  country. 
Every  change  of  season,  every  change  of  weather,  indeed, 
every  hour  of  day  produces  some  change  in  the  magical 
hues  and  shapes  of  these  mountains  j  and  they  are  re 
garded  by  all  the  good  wives,  far  and  near,  as  perfect 
barometers.  When  the  weather  is  settled,  they  are 
clothed  in  blue  and  purple,  and  print  their  bold  outlines 
on  the  clear  evening  sky;  but,  sometimes,  when  the  rest 
of  the  landscape  is  cloudless,  they  will  gather  a  hood  of 
gray  vapors  around  their  summits,  which,  in  the  last  rays 
of  the  setting  sun,  will  glow  and  light  up  like  a  crown 
of  glory. 

(These  rich  words  are  none  of  mine,  but  Washington 
Irving's,  scriptor  Americanus ,  abnormis  sapiens;  they  are 
put  in  here  because  they  are  so  good,  because  they  are  so 
pat,,  and  because,  forming  as  they  do  a  part  of  one  of 
the  greatest  American  classics,  they  are  not  likely  to  lack 
novelty.  They  flow  on :) 

At  the  foot  of  these  fairy  mountains  the  voyager  may 
have  descried  the  light  smoke  curling  up  from  a  village, 

39 


30  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

whose  shingle  roofs  gleam  among  the  trees,  just  where 
the  blue  tints  of  the  upland  melt  into  the  fresh  green 
of  the  nearer  landscape.  It  is  a  little  village  of  great 
antiquity,  having  been  founded  by  the  Dutch  colonists, 
in  the  early  days  of  the  province,  just  about  the  beginning 
of  the  government  of  the  good  Peter  Stuyvesant,  (may 
he  rest  in  peace!) 

And  here  we  must  let  Irving,  also,  rest  in  peace :  even 
though  we  may  pray  that,  from  time  to  time,  somewhat 
of  his  spirit  may  be  manifest  among  us;  for  the  Dutch 
houses  he  proceeds  to  mention  have  long  since  gone  down 
into  the  dust  and  ashes  of  a  larger  antiquity.  Nor  does 
he  refer  to  the  Skuyterkill,  surely  an  important  feature 
of  the  village  of  Woodbridge,  whose  present  aspects  he 
has  thus  far  located  and  described. 

Perhaps  the  Skuyterkill  is  not  so  important  in  itself, 
even  though  it  is  a  prettier  little  stream  than  its  signifi 
cance  of  "  Squatters'  Creek "  might  indicate,  as  in  its 
effects.  In  an  antiquity  sufficient  to  modernize  even 
Irving's  Dutch  houses,  it  had  much  to  do  with  modeling 
the  fine  valley,  most  spacious  of  Catskill  valleys,  that  now 
bears  its  name.  Between  The  Slide  and  Teyce  Ten  Eyck 
Mountain,  which  terminate  the  ridges  on  either  side  of  its 
eastward  debouchment  toward  the  Hudson,  there  is  a  two- 
by-ten-mile  sweep  of  rolling,  variegated  country,  not  so 
bad  as  much  of  our  eastern  lands  for  farming,  and  super 
lative  in  its  response  to  the  changing  lights  of  morning 
and  evening,  to  the  changing  vestures  of  spring,  summer, 
autumn,  and  winter. 

It  is  not  a  valley  to  tempt  eagle-spirits;  there  is  little 
of  the  obtrusively  grand  and  awesome  about  it;  but  for 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  31 

friendliness,  expansiveness,  quiet  beauty  and  a  certain 
rough  eccentricity  approaching  downright  humor,  it  has 
received  the  homage  of  a  few  choice  souls.  Nor  does  its 
lack  of  obtrusive  grandeur  and  awesomeness  indicate  any 
pettiness  in  its  make-up:  rather,  as  among  human  char 
acteristics  of  any  real  depths,  the  reverse.  Especially 
when  evening  slants  across  the  summits  and  the  long  sky- 
roofed  corridors  to  westward,  it  seems  to  include  all  the 
space  in  the  world,  and  in  the  unplumbed  universe  be 
yond.  Its  mountains  neither  make  sterile  the  earth,  nor 
shut  out  the  sky. 

Woodbridge  on  the  Skuyterkill,  Slide  Mountain  and 
Teyce  Ten  Eyck — the  names  in  juxtaposition  suggest  the 
basic  Dutch-English  stock  of  the  inhabitants.  But  if  the 
stock  is  basically  Dutch-English,  time  and  chance  have 
made  the  present  branches  more  heterogeneous  of  nation 
ality  and  social  strata  than  is  the  case  with  most  other 
similar  communities  of  our  heterogeneous  America.  No 
more  than  America  itself  has  it  proved  a  melting  pot;  it 
has  received  strains  and  meanings  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  and  of  time,  not  to  fuse  them  into  a  hard  uni 
formity,  but  to  develop  the  most  viable  of  their  differ 
ences,  keeping  them  distinct,  fluid,  chemically  combin- 
able,  capable  of  life-giving  reactions  and  surprises,  an 
earnest  of  the  absurdity  of  some  erudite  fears  for  the 
world-state  that  is  to  be. 

Some  three  decades  since,  a  certain  rich  man  founded 
a  Ruskinesque  art  and  handicrafts  colony  on  the  north 
ward  side  of  the  valley,  westward  of  the  summit  of  Teyce 
Ten  Eyck  some  two  miles,  and  some  three  miles  from  the 
old  village.  A  few  years  later  came  the  summer  school 
of  a  New  York  academy  of  painting.  From  these  be- 


32  STRAYED  "REVELLERS 

ginnings,  the  community  has  added  to  its  year-round 
population  numerous  unattached  artists,  writers,  retired 
business  men,  peripatetic  philosophers,  and  general  intel 
lectual  vagrants,  thrown  off  from  the  maelstrom  of  New 
York  City,  for  the  most  part,  and  more  congenial  to  the 
easy-going  ways  of  Woodbridge  than  to  the  somewhat 
constricting  activities  of  our  new  Hub  of  the  Universe. 
Without  minimizing  the  importance  of  hubs,  Woodbridge 
enjoyed  its  peripheral  position  as  offering  it  freedom  from 
much  purely  mechanical  wear  and  tear,  as  well  as  afford 
ing  a  larger  view  of  the  universe.  If  New  York  moved 
the  universe,  it  had  its  reward;  and  Woodbridge  felt  any 
thing  but  compunction  for  sitting,  in  the  nature  of  a 
philosophical  fly,  on  a  spoke  of  its  wheel. 

It  was  both  fortunate  in  its  position,  and  jealous  of  its 
fortune;  since  the  village  lay  some  four  miles  from  the 
nearest  railway  station,  and  a  slightly  greater  distance 
from  the  nearest  Hudson  River  landing,  it  had  escaped 
that  devastating  summer  invasion  whose  signs  are  merry- 
go-rounds,  dance-halls,  booze-pagodas  and  synagogues 
in  the  remoter  Catskill  cities,  and  even  its  half-dozen 
farmer-boarding-house-keepers  were  a  unit  with  the  rest 
of  the  community  in  desiring  to  make  its  escape  per 
manent.  Throughout  its  various  social  strata  it  had  a 
sort  of  snobbery,  neither  financial  nor  social,  but  intel 
lectual  and  democratic,  that  had  proved  a  barrier  rather 
than  an  attraction  to  undesirables. 

For  ten  miles  along  either  side  of  the  Skuyterkill 
Valley,  and  over  the  ridges  between,  the  substantial  white 
farmhouses  of  the  older  generation  were  neighborly  with 
the  fanciful  dwellings  of  newer  arrivals,  from  sumptuous 
country  mansion  to  bark  hut,  with  wide-roofed  brown 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  33 

bungalows  in  the  majority.  The  village  itself  centered 
around  a  baker's  dozen  of  square,  pyramid-roofed,  ob 
viously  modern  houses;  four  or  five  older  houses  with 
gable  roofs;  two  little  white  churches  with  spires  remi 
niscent  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren;  a  restaurant-and- 
bakery;  two  general  stores;  a  combined  stationery  and 
candy  store,  barber-shop  and  auto  supply  station ;  a  square 
white  box  of  a  new  post-office ;  and  a  long,  roomy,  wooden 
"  Inn,"  that  was  passing  prosperous  until  the  town  went 
"  dry."  In  the  village,  and  indeed  throughout  the  coun 
try  at  large,  the  native  Woodbridgians  had  things  very 
much  their  own  way;  if  urban  wealth  and  intellect  had 
come  in,  urban  wealth  and  intellect  had  had  the  intelli 
gence,  after  a  few  brief  and  abortive  attempts,  to  leave 
matters  in  the  hands  of  the  native  majority.  There  were 
no  lock-pulling  volk  and  no  Pruss-like  over-lords  as  at 
Garrison,  a  few  miles  down  the  river. 

The  natives  had  profited  and  improved  along  with  the 
immigrants.  It  is  true  that  a  social  investigator,  or  a 
sentimental  lady  novelist,  would  have  had  no  difficulty  in 
finding  proofs  of  native  degeneration.  But,  if  some  went 
down,  others  went  up;  the  town  idiot  was  at  least  coun 
terbalanced  by  town  brains,  and  if  native  brain  and  pluck 
went  elsewhere  it  was  not  lost.  Even  a  most  pessimistic 
and  gifted  lady  novelist,  tragedy-bent,  would  have  had  to 
pick  her  material  with  care  in  order  to  prove  the  degen 
eracy  of  the  eastern  hill  districts  on  the  basis  of  Wood- 
bridge.  Mulched  with  decay,  after  nature's  general 
provision,  it  undoubtedly  was,  but  there  was  a  good  deal 
more  to  it,  as  there  may  well  be  to  most  communities, 
than  the  mulch. 

Part  of  all  this  Clotilde  looked  down  on,  and  guessed 


34  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

at,  from  the  southwest  corner  of  Henry  Hooghtyling's 
farm,  half-way  up  Teyce  Ten  Eyck  Mountain.  Five- 
o'clock  sunlight  slanted  down  the  valley,  making  the 
trees  and  meadows  glisten,  picking  out  the  roofs  of 
scattered  bungalows  and  the  more  distant  village  build 
ings.  She  commented : 

"  It's  a  wonderfully  mixed-up  place,  isn't  it  ?  Old  and 
new,  ultra-modern — and  coming  out  today  I  saw  a  team 
of  oxen  hauling  wood  along  the  new  state  road.  How 
white  those  two  church-spires  are — and  that  big  gray  roof 
between  them  is  the  roof  of  the  art  students'  dormitory, 
isn't  it?" 

"  That's  where  they  sleep,  but  they  mostly  takes  their 
meals  at  boardin'  houses  and  the  new  restaurant,"  Henry 
elucidated,  looking  it  all  over  with  quiet  appreciation  and 
a  kind  of  ownership.  He  added :  "  They's  almost  more 
stoodlums  than  farmhouses  now ;  used  to  be  I  could  look 
down  from  here  and  not  see  a  single  stoodlum." 

"  Stoodlum  ?  "  repeated  Clotilde. 

"  The  places  where  the  artusses  live  and  paint  pictures 
— though,  of  course,  their  real  names  is  stood-yohs." 

They  were  both  silent  for  a  little  while,  for  perhaps  two 
minutes,  during  which  Clotilde's  attention  drifted  away 
from  the  view,  in  which  she  had  never  been  more  than 
half  interested,  and  became  centered  on  the  stolid,  sad- 
faced,  broken,  but  philosophical  man  beside  her.  She 
stared  at  him  hard,  turning  away  from  moment  to  mo 
ment  to  look  keenly  outward,  in  a  way  that  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  view.  Her  clear  brown  eyes  yearned  over 
him  a  little,  pitied,  doubted,  speculated;  at  moments,  in 
spite  of  her  girlishness,  there  was  something  motherly- 
tender  in  her  face. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  35 

"  Mr.  Hooghtyling,"  she  began,  with  sudden  deter 
mination  that  swept  from  her  everything  but  a  clear,  cool 
frankness,  "  I  believe  in  being  perfectly  plain  and 
straightforward  about  everything — don't  you?" 

Her  voice,  belying  an  increasing  tension  about  her 
eyes  and  mouth,  was  as  calm,  as  matter-of-fact,  almost  as 
indifferent  as  if  she  had  been  contemplating  a  question 
of  afternoon  tea. 

"  Why,  sure,"  admitted  Henry,  absently,  mendaciously, 
considering,  through  eyes  like  binoculars,  how  like  a 
scurrying  black  bug  was  an  automobile  on  the  white  state 
road,  three  miles  away. 

"  Truth,  just  plain  Truth,  is  the  greatest  thing  in  the 
world,"  mentioned  Clotilde  in  a  way  that  inevitably  sug 
gested  Truth's  relationship  with  a  cold  pancake. 

And  yet  she  was  deeply  stirred;  she  had  that  vital 
interest  in  matter  which  alternating  generations  bestow 
on  manner,  and  naked,  abstract  Truth  was  more  to  her 
than  all  the  seven  veils  of  Truth's  customary  adornment. 
In  the  midst  of  a  world  cozily  pantheistic,  fetishistic, 
frankly  euphemistic  and  idolatrous,  she  stood  with  a  little 
group  of  the  new  generation,  mostly  young  women,  who 
had  attained,  often  together,  sometimes  singly,  to  a  stern 
monotheism  of  idea.  If  youth  is  a  revel,  especially  youth 
among  the  leisure  and  semi-leisure  classes,  perhaps  its 
least  harmful  tipple  is  new  ideas;  whatever  their  brand, 
they  may  uplift  oftener  than  they  blight.  Uplifted, 
clear,  cool,  and  calm  were  Clotilde's  wide  eyes,  straight 
and  stimulated  was  her  slender  figure,  as  she  stood  beside 
the  moss-grown  human  relic  beside  her  and  announced, 
like  an  aroused  Vestal,  the  greatness  of  her  idea  of  Truth. 

Henry  Hooghtyling  had  had  no  experience  with  Truth 


36  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

capitalized,  but  only  with  a  considerable  spawn  of  small 
truths.  "  Leastwise,"  he  commented,  not  much  inter 
ested  in  this  high,  alien  subject,  "  George  Washington 
would  agree  with  you." 

Declared  Clotilde,  with  slight  irritation  for  the  lowness 
of  his  view :  "  If  people  would  only  be  absolutely  truthful 
with  each  other,  all  the  troubles  in  the  world  would  vanish 
like  mists  before  the  sun — at  least  all  the  real  troubles 
would." 

"  Uh-huh — ye-es."  Henry  admitted,  with  politeness 
but  no  great  show  of  conviction,  the  plausibility  of  this 
First  Article  in  the  creed  of  Modernism.  "  Once  I  heard 
of  a  man  started  out  to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothin'  but  the  truth — " 

"  Oh,  yes — and  he  found  himself  in  hot  water  right 
away,  too,  didn't  he?  "  Clotilde  interrupted,  with  gentle 
ness  of  voice,  and  yet  great  firmness  too.  "  Nothing  is 
easier  to  make  ridiculous  than  the  great  and  important 
facts  of  life."  She  was  as  calmly  sure  of  herself  as  a 
young  priestess  giving  forth  her  first  revelation.  "  Truth 
is  not  only  beauty — it  is  goodness,  too, — that  is  all  we 
know  on  earth,  and  all  we  need  to  know.  Why,  if  only 
two  or  three  men  had  told  each  other  the  truth,  and  their 
peoples  the  truth,  or  anything  like  the  truth,  this  whole 
miserable  European  War  need  never  have  started. 
People  must  be  true  to  the  truth,  frank,  ready  to  call 
things  by  their  real  nar-es — " 

"  I  never  heard  that."  Henry  slipped  in  the  remark 
with  caution,  and  aroused  interest.  "  Around  here  they 
say  it  was  mostly  because  the  big-mouthed  bluffer  of  a 
German  Kaiser — " 

Clotilde  tried  to  move  on  toward  her  appointed  ends: 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  37 

"  And,  because  I  believe  in  the  truth,  in  perfect  frank 
ness — " 

"  Him  and  his  spies,"  continued  Henry,  reposefully 
rinding  personalities  to  chew  on  in  the  midst  of  this  much 
thin  air.  "  Why,  I  hear  they  was  a  German  spy  caught 
just  the  other  day,  over  in  Delaware  County.  He  came 
into  a  farmhouse  and  asked  to  stay  over-night,  and  when 
the  woman  went  out,  the  children  saw  him  put  somethin' 
into  the  beans.  She  had  a  mess  o'  beans  on  the  stove, 
cookin'  them  for  supper.  The  children  was  just  old 
enough  to  notice,  and  when  they  told  the  woman  the 
man'd  put  somethin'  in  the  beans,  she  never  said  nothin', 
but  waited  till  her  husband  come,  and  told  him,  and  her 
husband  said,  '  All  right — let's  sit  down  to  supper.'  And 
gave  the  German  spy  a  plate  o'  beans,  and  said :  '  Eat 
those,  and  see  how  you  like  'em — specially  the  flavorin';' 
and  when  the  German  spy  said  he  never  et  beans,  but 
couldn't  he  have  somethin'  else,  the  farmer  went  and  got 
his  revolver,  and  stuck  it  against  the  spy's  head,  and  said : 
'  Now  you  eat  those  beans,  all  on  'em,  or  git  your  brains 
blowed  out.'  And  the  spy  et  'em — and  they  killed  him. 
He  died  right  away,  quick — yes,  sir ! 

"  Now,  I  dunno  what  a  German  spy'd  want  with  tryin' 
to  poison  a  country  family,"  hedged  Henry,  while  Clo- 
tilde  looked  on  in  sufficient  astonishment  to  make  her 
forget,  for  the  moment,  her  previously  appointed  ends; 
"  but  that's  what  they  say — and  I  got  it  pretty  straight, 
too." 

"  Of  all  the  nonsense — of  all  the  impossible  tales — as 
you  say,  why  on  earth  should  any  German  spy  want  to 
poison  a  country  family  ?  "  Clotilde  was  radiantly  indig 
nant.  Henry  repeated  her  indignation  in  a  fainter  form 


38  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

by  scowling  and  nodding  his  head.  "  That's  what  I  say 
— but  they  has  been  German  spies  in  this  country — or 
would  you  it  was  all  nothin'  but  sich  poddle-dock  as 
that?" 

"  It  has  been  much  exaggerated — just  like  the  wild 
yarn  you've  just  told  me,"  Clotilde  decreed;  "and  I'm 
glad  to  see  you  don't  believe  it. — But,  I  was  about, — I 
wanted  to  tell  you — when  you  got  started  on  that  absurd 
spy  story — " 

Henry  apologized :  "  I  just  happened  to  think  of  it — " 

"  I  was  going  to  tell  you,  speaking  of  truth  and  frank 
ness  and — and  perfect  frankness  between  people,  you 
know — "  She  seemed  to  have  some  difficulty  in  getting 
back  into  the  swing  of  her  revelation;  Henry  deferen 
tially,  though  with  a  vacantness  of  face  that  suggested 
continued  mulling  over  the  German  spy  question,  waited 
for  her.  "  I  wanted  to  say  that,  because  I  do  believe  so 
strongly  in  plain  dealing,  as  well  as  because  I  don't  want 
any  misunderstanding  to  cloud  the  beginning  of  our 
acquaintance — for  these  good  reasons,  I  want  to  tell 
you,  now,  that  I'm  your  daughter.  I'm  sorry  I  didn't 
mention  it  before.  I  intended  to  tell  you  within  five 
minutes,  at  most,  after  I'd  met  you,  but,  somehow,  we 
got  to  talking  of  other  things." 

It  was  all  magnificently  flat,  bald,  improbable,  fishy,  in 
spite  of,  or  because  of,  its  herald's  calm  and  flat  con 
viction.  Henry  glanced  quickly  at  her,  raised  his  strag 
gling  reddish  left  eyebrow  a  quarter  of  an  inch,  puffed 
his  pipe,  and  glanced,  with  one  faintly  interested  blink, 
away.  After  a  little  further  absorption  of  the  gist  of 
her  statement,  he  was  sufficiently  impressed  to  remove 
his  pipe  from  his  mouth  and  glance  at  her  again.  Both 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  39 

his  eyebrows  were  raised,  at  least  a  half-inch  each,  this 
time;  he  blinked  rapidly  three  times,  scowling  crescendo. 
It  would  have  taken  him  at  least  a  year,  of  ten  hours' 
solid  conversational  maneuvering  a  day,  to  reach  a  flat 
statement  of  that  consequence,  and  yet  he  was  coming  on. 
Clotilde  met  his  surprise  quietly,  unflinchingly,  a 
priestess  floating  on  the  knowledge  that  naked  Truth  was 
at  her  side,  that  the  very  stars  in  their  courses  stood 
ready  to  vindicate  her.  "  As  I  said  before,  when  I 
thought  you  guessed,"  she  told  him  evenly,  beginning 
to  show  a  slight  flush  of  excitement  nevertheless,  "  it's 
nothing  whatever  to  get  excited  about.  I'm  glad  of  it — 
and  I  hope  you  are." 

•  Henry  developed,  slowly,  but  with  the  thoroughness 
in  detail  and  general  effect  of  a  well-handled  negative. 
Within  half  a  minute  he  was  displaying  the  round-eyed, 
drop-jawed  effect  that  was  his  common  reaction  to  a 
matter  at  once  dubious  and  astounding.  He  did  not 
really  drop  his  jaw;  rather  he  tilted  his  head  back 
ward  while  keeping  his  lower  jaw  stationary,  thus 
giving  his  gesture  a  greater  dignity  and  reticence  than  if 
he  had  merely  opened  his  mouth  by  dropping  his  jaw. 
"  Ah — ho-oh  ?  "  he  commented  blankly.  His  wide  gray 
eyes  began  to  narrow  and  pucker  with  the  rapidity  of 
his  search  of  inward  backgrounds,  possibilities,  entail- 
ments.  Quite  suddenly  his  mouth  went  shut,  his  eyes 
became  slits,  his  face  hardened  and  whitened;  with  the 
deliberate  effectiveness  of  a  threatened  box-turtle  he  re 
tired  into  his  shell.  "Huh!"  he  breathed  sharply;  it 
was  like  the  quick  gasp  produced  by  a  retiring  turtle 
when  it  expresses  the  air  from  its  lungs  to  make  room 
for  all  its  withdrawing  members  inside  its  shell. 


40  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  It's  nothing  to  get  excited  about — absolutely  noth 
ing  ! "  insisted  Clotilde,  quite  tremulous  with  excitement. 
"  Why,  I'm  prouder  of  my  new  ancestry  than  I  ever  was 
of  being  a  Westbrook.  You  see,  I've  looked  you — I've 
looked  us  up !  We're  related  to  the  Houghtelings,  one  of 
the  finest  families  in  America — and  we're  the  main 
branch,  too, — not  that  ancestry  counts  for  much — but  I 
just  want  to  make  you  glad — make  you  understand  that 
I'm  really  glad — to  have  found  out !  "  Her  voice,  in 
spite  of  its  ring  of  excitement,  tried  to  be  soothing, 
reassuring,  quite  as  if  he  had  been  a  terrified  box-turtle 
shutting  himself  up,  with  some  painfulness,  against  a 
gentle  lady  who  was  far  readier  to  feed  and  pet  him  than 
to  do  him  any  harm.  "  Please  don't  look  so  cut  up! " 
she  protested.  In  spite  of  the  shell  of  super-Dutch 
stolidity  into  which  he  had  retired,  Henry  might  have 
been  accused  of  looking  cut  up.  "I  just  think  we  ought 
to  face  facts — and  accept  them  for  facts,  you  know.  I'm 
ready  to  be  perfectly  frank  and  open  about  this  whole 
matter — not  that  there's  anything  about  it  that  either  of 
us,  that  anybody  with  a  trace  of  modern  intelligence,  need 
be  the  faintest  little  bit  ashamed  of.  Just  as  soon  as  I  can, 
tomorrow  if  you're  willing,  I  want  to  take  you  down  and 
introduce  you  to  all  my  friends  in  Woodbridge  as  my 
father." 

In  his  youth,  Henry  had  indulged  in  that  youthful 
bucolic  pastime  of  putting  a  coal  of  fire  on  a  box-turtle's 
back  to  make  it  come  out  of  its  shell;  and  not  only  to 
make  it  come  out  of  its  shell,  but  to  show  signs  of  great 
animation  besides.  If  he  hadn't  been  so  much  taken  up 
with  more  important  considerations,  the  effect  of  this 
Coffer  on  him  might  have  reminded  him  of  lively  moments 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  41 

in  his  past.  "  Oh,  now — please — no !  "  he  stuttered, 
waving  his  right  hand  like  a  flapper  at  the  level  of  his 
face,  craning  his  turtle-like  neck,  bobbing  his  sharp-faced, 
thin-lipped,  not  un-turtle-like  head.  "  Wait — don't  start 
nawthin' — " 

"  Well,  of  course  if  you  don't  feel — "  hesitated  Clo- 
tilde,  not  above  emotions  of  pity  even  while  exhilarated 
by  much  pure  Truth. 

With  the  coal  of  fire  removed,  or  at  least  lessened  in 
warmth,  Henry  became  calmer,  even  to  the  extent  of 
retiring  part  way  into  his  shell  again.  He  turned  away 
from  her,  and  stood  leaning  against  a  fence-post,  staring 
with  all  his  rheumy-eyed  might  at  nothing  at  all.  Clotilde 
pitied  him,  and  yet  the  Truth  was  the  Truth.  He  had  no 
right  to  take  it  so  hard;  to  her  mind,  and  she  had  exam 
ined  the  matter  in  the  light  of  all  the  large  and  brilliant 
basic  Modernistic  beliefs  she  possessed,  it  was  nothing 
that  a  person  ought  to  get  excited  about,  or  be  much 
ashamed  of.  She  protested,  with  distressed  disappoint 
ment.  "  Really,  I  didn't  expect  you  to  take  it  like  this. 
I  thought  I'd  just  explain  and  that  you  might  even  be 
pleased — to  know  that  I'm  your  daughter:  just  as  I  am 
pleased,  deeply  pleased,  to  know  that  you're  my  father." 

She  waited.  Henry  objected,  feebly  embracing  his 
fence-post :  "  I  can't  hardly  swaller  it.  I  don't  know 
'bout  such  things.  It  might  be  all  just  a  mistake." 

"  Oh,  as  for  that,  it's  perfectly  true,"  testified  Clotilde, 
tolerant  of  his  disbelief,  and  yet  with  the  clear  certainty 
of  an  eye-witness  to  the  whole  matter  in  dispute.  "  And 
it's  only  when  we  refuse  to  accept  a  truth,  that  it  hurts 
us."  This  abstraction  was  so  far  removed  from  Henry's 
immediate  and  very  concrete  interests  that  he  continued 


42  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

to  sag,  in  a  weak,  disorderly  way,  against  his  fence-post, 
silently  picking  out  the  salient  points  in  his  disordered 
universe.  Brightly,  as  if  she  accepted  his  silence  as 
presaging  a  return  of  reason,  Clotilde  proceeded :  "  Come, 
now,  is  it  so  terrible  that  you've  been  introduced  to  a 
daughter  you  didn't  know  you  had  ?  " 

Henry  admitted,  with  deep  feeling :  "  It's  a  kind  of  a 
shock  to  a  man — and  my  heart  ain't  real  straw-ong." 

"  But  it  oughtn't  to  be  such  a  shock — and,  anyway,  not 
a  sad  shock — like  a  death  in  the  family,  or  something.  I 
confess,  I  was  so  egotistical  as  to  hope  you  might  be — 
well — just  a  little  bit  proud  of  me !  Don't  you  think  I'd 
make  you  a  pretty  good  daughter  ?  " 

"  'Tain't  that— exactly." 

"  Well,  then — why  can't  we  accept  each  other,  openly, 
as  father  and  daughter?  " 

He  shuddered.  "  A  man's  got  to  take  a  lot  o'  things 
into  consideration." 

"  Well,  what— for  instance?  " 

"  Oh — a  lot."  He  seemed  half -paralyzed  by  the 
multitude. 

"  Name  me  just  one!  " 

He  ventured,  "  Well — there's  Ethel."  This  external 
wracking,  combined  with  his  internal  inquisition,  left  him 
fearful,  half-voiceless,  distraught. 

Clotilde  received  an  unexpected  shock.  Ethel  was  a 
consideration.  Did  Ethel  abuse  that  weak,  fearful  old 
man?  she  wondered.  Ethel  was  accustomed  to  lay  up 
stone  walls,  anyway,  which  argued  abilities. 

"  But  she,  also,  ought  to  be  glad."  Clotilde  gained 
inspiration  by  facing  this  difficulty,  by  turning  the  pure 
light  of  Modernistic  truth  upon  it.  "  Why  shouldn't  she 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  43 

be  glad?  Let's  just  look  at  it  as  a  Fact,  without  all 
the  foolish  superstitions  many  people  have  about  such 
things.  Let's  look  at  it  calmly — fully — at  its  actual 
essence.  Is  there  anything  about  it  that  everybody 
oughtn't  to  be  glad  of — now?  Why,  I  consider  myself 
a  pretty  good  excuse  for  it,  if  it  needs  any !  I  wouldn't 
have  been  alive,  myself,  if  it  hadn't  happened — I  would 
have  been  worse  than  dead !  For,  of  course,  it's  a  thou 
sand  times  better  to  have  lived  and  died  than  never  to 
have  lived  at  all.  Can't  you  be  a  little  glad  of  it — as 
lam?" 

Neither  by  word  nor  look  did  Henry  suggest  gladness. 
Clotilde  laughed  at  him,  and  yet  there  was  vexation  in 
her  laugh.  "  You're  all  overcome  by  old  superstitions, 
sickly  old  lying  morals  and  maxims  that  won't  bear  sun 
light  !  "  she  rallied  him,  picking  words  readily  out  of  her 
wide  literary  background  under  the  stimulus  of  a  real 
enthusiasm  for  her  subject.  "  Why,  there's  some  good 
in  nearly  everything — yesterday's  bad  is  often  enough 
today's  good,  you  know.  And,  look  back  on  what  may 
have  been  bad,  or  had  some  bad  mixed  up  in  it — wasn't 
there  something  beautiful  and  good  and  true  in  it,  too? 
Was  it  altogether  low,  vile,  what  happened  twenty-five 
years  ago  this  coming  October — one  October  night  when 
the  moon  was  high — and  there  was  Indian  summer — 
Indian  summer,  with  its  sweetness  like  a  richer  spring 
in  the  air  ? — Please  don't  shudder — it's  all  so  long  past — 
and  wasn't  there  anything  more  than  things  to  be  shud 
dered  at  in  it,  anyway?  Remember  the  little  lonely 
brown  bungalow,  all  shut  in  by  darkness  and  moonlight 
and  the  singing  pines,  with  the  Skuyterkill  babbling  along 
over  its  pebbles  just  below  the  back  door — remember  how 


44  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

you  found  an  old  stone  pitcher,  and  dipped  up  water  from 
the  brook — for  her — my  poor  mother — who  paid,  and 
more  than  paid — " 

Old  Hooghtyling  trembled  so  violently  that  he  gripped 
his  fence-post  with  both  hands  for  support;  she  did  not 
notice,  for  she  had  ceased  to  look  at  him.  She  was 
looking  out  over  the  darkening  valley,  inspired,  devo 
tional,  glorying  in  an  old,  and  true,  and  very  bitter-sweet 
romance.  She  said,  almost  chanting: 

"  Poor,  foolish  girl — poor  boy !  How  inevitable  it  was 
that  he  should  fall  desperately  in  love  with  the  pretty  girl 
artist — who  was  enough  in  love  with  him  to  lure  him 
on,  like  the  nasty  little  mid-Victorian  pussy  cat  she  was, 
and  couldn't  well  help  being,  because  men,  and  society,  and 
even  her  foolish  mother  were  determined  she  should  be 
just  that — how  inevitable  that  she  should  play  with  him, 
flirt  with  him,  tease  him  despicably — and  feel  rather 
amused  than  sorry  for  him  when  he  confessed  to  her 
that  he  couldn't  sleep  at  night  for  thinking  of  her,  nor 
think  of  anything  else  by  day !  " 

Hooghtyling's  corded  brown  hands,  fastened  on  the 
fence-post,  quivered,  contracted,  turned  bluish  at  the 
knuckles;  his  head  drooped  in  a  slow  palsy  toward  his 
breast. 

Clotilde  did  not  see  him;  her  mind,  her  backward- 
turned  eyes,  were  full  of  the  idyl  of  a  vanished  boy 
and  girl,  of  the  truth  and  poetry  about  them,  of  poetry 
that  inspired  her  because  it  was  true,  and  a  part  of  the 
blood  in  her  veins.  Her  inward  rhapsody  swelled  into 
words :  "  Oh,  it  was  in  some  way  just  and  right  that  he 
should  be  carried  away,  and  carry  her  away  with  him — 
there  in  the  old  pine  woods — that  he  should  sweep  away 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  45 

all  the  little  lies  and  trickeries  of  her — lies  and  trickeries 
that  made  it  the  more  inevitable  that  she  should  yield 
because  she  didn't  half-understand  how  much  she  wanted 
and  needed  to  yield!  And  there  is  something  of  poetic 
justice,  too,  that  the  country  should,  for  once,  have  turned 
the  tables  on  the  city — that  what  is  forever  happening 
between  country  girl  and  city  boy  should  have  happened 
between  city  girl  and  country  boy — surely  he  had  a  hun 
dred  times  greater  provocation  than  any  predacious 
young  male  from  the  city  ever  had !  Yes,  there  was  truth 
and  justice  in  it — and  now,  now  that  it's  all  so  dead  and 
gone — now  that  the  wrong,  if  it  was  wrong,  has  been 
paid  for  a  hundred  times  over — I'm  glad — glad  to  thank 
the  Spirit  of  the  Universe — "  Tears  were  in  her  up 
turned  eyes,  orange-tinted,  level  sunlight  from  the  west 
played  over  her  white,  transfigured  face.  "  Oh,  I'm  glad 
to  thank  Him,  that,  in  that  outburst  of  His  power,  His 
truth,  His  justice,  my  being  and  my  soul  began ! " 

Her  voice  broke  into  a  sharp  little  sob;  overfilled  with 
recreated  emotion,  made  the  more  susceptible  to  it  by 
what  of  that  long-past  little  drama  still  lingered  in  her 
veins  and  nerves,  she  turned  away  her  head,  stifled  several 
succeeding  sobs,  got  out  the  little  blue-edged  pocket  hand 
kerchief  and  pressed  it  against  her  eyes.  She  had  almost 
forgotten  old  Hooghtyling's  presence;  she  had  not  looked 
at  him  for  some  minutes.  "  There,  I'm  a  poor  fool  to 
lose  my  self-possession  like  that!  "  she  choked,  in  apology 
to  herself  rather  than  to  him;  "  but  it  does  mean  such  a 
lot  to  me !  I  never  began  to  understand  myself  until 
I  knew ! — And  I  think  it  was  the  final  perfect  touch  that 
you  never  saw  each  other  again,  that  you  never  even 
heard  of  each  other  again,  after  that  night." 


46  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

This  last  was  addressed  solely  to  Hooghtyling,  and  she 
turned  toward  him  as  she  spoke. 

She  made  out,  mistily  because  of  the  mist  still  in  her 
eyes,  that  he  was  not  where  he  had  been  when  she  had 
seen  him  last.  He  was  lying,  with  blood  on  one  up 
turned  cheek,  crumpled  down  against  the  fence-post  to 
which  he  had  been  holding. 

With  instantaneous  efficiency  she  was  at  his  side,  had 
loosened  his  collar  and  shirt-front,  pushed  her  hand  down 
over  the  serrated  leathern  clamminess  of  his  breast.  He 
had  only  fainted,  she  decided;  and  one  of  the  barbs  of 
the  barbed-wire  fence  must  have  cut  his  cheek  as  he  sank 
to  the  ground.  She  remembered  that  he  had  said  he 
had  a  weak  heart,  and,  while  she  chafed  his  temples  and 
wrists,  roundly  cursed  her  thoughtlessness.  Cursing  had 
been  one  of  her  extra-curricular  courses  at  Vassar;  under 
great  provocation,  she  performed  as  efficiently  as  any 
young  gentleman — or  as  most  Modernistic,  ancj  some 
antique,  young  ladies. 


DURING  WHICH  SEVERAL  CONFIDENCES  ARE  PLACED 
IN  AN  APPRECIATIVE  CORNER 

TOWARD  eight  o'clock  that  evening,  by  way  of  a  walk 
to  the  Brooks'  farmhouse  where  there  was  a  telephone, 
and  a  ride  in  a  buggy  driven  by  an  adoring  "  Skeeter  " 
whom  she  scarcely  noticed,  Clotilde  reached  the  front 
door  of  the  cleverest  Woodbridgian  gossip,  and  knocked. 

The  clever  one  herself  opened  the  door,  and  stood  re 
vealed  in  the  misty  glow  of  red-hooded  candles  behind 
her. 

"  Hello,  Edna,"  said  Clotilde. 

"  Well — the  saints  preserve  us !  How  on  earth — at 
this  hour?  Why,  we  weren't  expecting — "  They  kissed 
affectionately.  " — you  for  a  week  at  least!  You  don't 
know  how  I've  been  hungering  for  you.  Things  have 
been  unconscionably  slow — and  nerve-wracking.  Come 
right  in — and  tell  me  all  the  Greenwich  Village  scandal 
immediately !  "  Edna  led  the  way  into  the  big  beam- 
ceilinged,  wood-ceiled  living-room  of  the  bungalow, 
turned  about,  and  surveyed  her  guest  as  if  expecting  to 
gather  the  first  morsels  of  scandal  merely  by  looking. 

"  First,  something  to  eat,  if  you  please;  I  haven't  had 
a  bite  since  lunch  on  the  train  at  eleven  o'clock;  say, 
that's  a  spiffy  house-dress  you  have  on,"  said  Clotilde. 

"  For  the  love  of  Mike !     Come  right  into  the  kitchen ! 

47 


48  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

— Yes,  it  is  rather  a  dear,  isn't  it  ?  "  Edna,  already 
lightly  on  her  way  to  the  rear  of  the  living-room,  patted 
the  silken  trousers  of  her  costume  as  she  walked.  It 
was  a  Chinese  suit,  red  and  blue  embroidered  in  yellow, 
showing  six  inches  of  yellow  silk  stocking  between  the 
ends  of  the  flappy  trousers  and  the  black  Chinese  pumps. 
"  It  makes  a  perfectly  corking  house-dress."  They  en 
tered  the  kitchen.  "  There,  sit  down,  you  poor  kid." 
Edna  pushed  forward  a  wooden  kitchen  chair  that  dif 
fered  from  thousands  of  its  relatives  only  in  being 
painted  a  brilliant  magenta,  and  scurried  over  to  her 
refrigerator.  "  Anchovies — grape  jelly — Camembert — 
half  an  artichoke,"  she  inventoried  rapidly.  "  It's  beastly 
hard  to  get  supplies  up  here — and  beastlier  since  the 
beastly  war  invaded  us !  But,  say,  there's  a  bit  of  left 
over  steak — I  could  warm  it  in  just  a  minute — " 

Clotilde  demanded :  "  Steak,  please !  Just  as  it  is — and 
bread  and  butter — thick  slices !  I  tell  you,  I'm  famished ! 
I've  spent  the  most — yes,  quite  the  most  stimulating 
afternoon  of  my  life — on  an  empty  stomach.  I'll  tell 
you  all  about  it,  but  not  a  word  till  I  taste  food!  So 
hurry!  " 

Chirping  surprise,  clucking  and  chortling  anticipated 
joy,  Edna  hurried.  She  was  a  deft  little  person :  as 
geniuses  often  are,  she  was  almost  petite.  The  wonder 
constantly  grew  that  one  small  head  could  carry  not  only 
all  she  knew,  but  all  she  suspected,  besides.  Capably  she 
sliced  bread,  deftly  she  hurried  it,  with  a  mound  of  butter 
on  one  side1  of  the  plate,  and  the  portion  of  cold  beef 
steak  on  another,  to  the  aluminum-topped  kitchen  table 
that  faced  Clotilde. 

"  What  on  earth  have  you  been  up  to?  "  she  demanded, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  49 

tripping  over  to  the  refrigerator  in  quest  of  anchovies, 
jelly,  the  artichoke  and  the  cheese. 

Clotilde  announced,  with  some  portentousness  in  spite 
of  a  muffled  voice :  "  I've  spent  the  afternoon,  Edna,  in 
getting  acquainted  with  my  father." 

Edna's  reaction  was  sufficiently  violent  and  sudden  to 
prove  the  plain  truth  potent  in  some  quarters,  at  least. 
"  God  save  us — Clo-tilde — don't  tell  me  you've  turned 
Spiritualist! " 

"  Don't  be  foolish." 

"  Well,  you  know,  dear,  that  you've  turned  such  a  lot 
of  things,  from  time  to  time,  or  at  least  been  interested 
in  them."  Edna  competently  served  the  remaining 
edibles  and  sat  down  in  a  delicate  azure  counterpart  of 
Clotilde's  chair.  "  Vibrationist,  New  Thought-ist,  So 
cialist,  Anarchist,  Christian  Scientist — " 

"  Oh,  cut  it !  I'm  serious.  You  know  I  merely  looked 
into  those — " 

"  Theosophist,  Fletcherist,  Freudist,  Psycho-analyst, 
Behaviorist,  Modernist,"  Edna  continued  imperturbably, 
well  knowing  that  Truth  comes  more  piquantly  from  a 
bottle  kept  corked  a  little  while.  "  In  your  investiga 
tions,  what  more  natural  than  that  you  should  have 
happened  upon  Spiritualist?  Such  a  lot  of  Modernistic 
-ists  you've  delved  into,  my  dear — " 

"  But,  I'm  serious,  Edna,"  protested  Clotilde,  showing 
precisely  the  proper  reaction  to  suppression.  "  You 
skeptic !  I  tell  you  my  father — " 

"  Yes,  life  has  made  me  a  skeptic — and  you've  helped." 
Edna  handled  the  cork  with  practised  fingers;  Clotilde's 
need  for  expression  was  becoming  so  large  that  she  had 
difficulty  in  eating.  "  Don't  I  remember  how  cleverly; 


50  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

you  put  it  over,  for  two  whole  months,  that  summer 
down  at  Lime,  that  you  were  a  Jewess?  And  that 
wasn't  half  as  improbable — " 

"  But  I  had  a  serious  reason — you  know  I  did,  dear !  " 
protested  Clotilde.  "  They  were  all  so  down  on  the 
Hebrews—" 

"  And  all  so  up  and  after  you !  " 

"  Well,  I  made  a  good  many  of  them  change  their  ideas 
about  Hebrews — or  at  least  about  Hebrewesses,  didn't  I  ? 
I  only  went  into  that  stunt  to  serve  the  truth,  Edna;  I 
was  not  a  bit  more  clever  and  attractive  than  a  lot  of 
Hebrew  girls  I  know,  and  I  wanted  to  show — " 

"  But  this  about  your  father  is  too  preposterous !  " 
insisted  Edna,  herding  Clotilde  skilfully  back  into  nearer 
and  more  surprising  fields.  "  You'll  have  to  work  harder 
to  support  that  than  you  ever  did  to  get  up  a  Jewish 
ancestry ! " 

"  I  shan't  have  to  work  at  all ! "  Clotilde  absorbed 
excellent  imported  cheese,  at  war  prices,  with  as  much 
appreciation  as  if  she'd  been  eating  crusts.  "  I  wish  you 
didn't  know  about  the  Lime  stunt — you  never  appreciated 
my  motives,  anyway.  But  motives  are  nothing  to  you. 
However,  this  time — " 

"Yes,  dear?" 

"  Oh,  I  wouldn't  bother  with  telling  you  if  I  didn't 
need  you  the  worst  way  to  help  me !  You're  a  cat,  Edna, 
a  perfect  cat! — But  I  can  convince  you!  The  fact  is, 
the  Reverend  Percy  Westbrook  wasn't  my  real  father; 
my  real  father's  name  is  Hooghtyling,  he  lives  on  the 
mountain  back  there;  he's  a  farmer,  a  plain,  country 
farmer,  with  horrible  finger-nails — and  teeth — and 
underwear.  Not  that  I'm  not  prouder  of  him  than  I 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  51 

ever  was  of  my  supposed  father — for  he's  got  brains, 
Edna — in  some  ways,  he  has  an  almost  Modern  intelli 
gence!  I've  just  spent  the  afternoon  with  him — so 
there!" 

"  Good  Heavens !  Does  he  admit  it  ? "  For  a 
moment  the  cleverest  Woodbridgian  gossip's  gray-green 
eyes  widened  with  something  approaching  belief,  with 
a  true  gossip's  joy  in  gossipful  discovery. 

Clotilde  explained  truthfully,  lamely :  "  Well,  not  in 
so  many  words — but — " 

"  I  see."  Edna  was  herself  again.  "  And  it  goes  to 
show,  your  being  his  daughter  does,  that  there's  nothing 
in  all  this  bunco  about  ancestry — that  you,  daughter  of  a 
plain  country  farmer,  are  just  as  clever  and  attractive 
as  if  you  were  a  blue-blooded  Westbrook — all  most 
Modernistic  and  Truthful — doesn't  it?  " 

It  was  a  retort  well  supplied  with  barbs,  but  there  was 
no  sting  in  Edna's  voice.  Clotilde,  eating  bread  and  jelly, 
nodded  with  vigor.  "  It  does.  As  I  told  you,  I'm  proud 
of  it.  I  know  where  I  get  my  brains,  now, — my  inde 
pendence — for  there  is  something  in  heredity,  as  well  as 
in  environment.  I  intend  that  everybody  shall  recognize 
him  as  my  father.  I  came  to  tell  you  at  once,  because 
I  knew,  if  I  did,  everybody  in  Woodbridge  would  know 
of  it  tomorrow.  There — take  that !  " 

"  I  do — I'm  proud  to  deserve  it. — Well,  I  helped  you 
at  Lime,  and  I'll  help  you  now.  It  will  help  to  take  my 
mind  off  this  beastly  war,  if  nothing  else.  By  tomorrow 
night,  Woodbridge  will  have  a  sensation  large  enough  to 
turn  Lime,  Conn.,  green  with  envy.  But,  say,  we'll 
have  to  lay  some  wires!  Will  old  farmer — what's  his 
name? — stand  for  it?  You  seemed  a  bit  doubtful. 


52  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Maybe  we'd  better  get  one  of  the  boys  to  go  up  and 
fix  father?  There  are  plenty  of  old  rubes  around  here 
who'll  do  if  he  hangs  back.  We  might  give  a  party,  and 
introduce  him!  I  begin  to  see  possibilities! — But,  say, 
dear — wait — another  thought — your  mother — this  is 
worse  than  making  her  a  daughter  of  David!  Good 
Lord!  Have  you  paused  to  reflect  that  your  mother 
might  be  interested  in  all  this  ?  " 

Clotilde  had  endured  with  the  patience  of  a  tormented 
saint.  "  Edna,  I  see — " 

"  Wait !  I  have  it !  A  rube  couple — not  a  rube  father 
solus — who  might  cast  reflections  on  somebody !  That's 
it — and  it  will  go  beautifully!  "  Edna  hopped  up  from 
her  chair;  ten  years  seemed  to  fall  from  her,  leaving 
her  almost  girlish.  "  Do  you  get  me  ?  You're  the 
daughter  of  an  old  rube  couple,  adopted  by  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Westbrook  when  an  infant — poverty  forced  'em 
to  part  with  you — reunion,  tears, — say,  we'll  hire  the 
League  Studio,  and  give  a  party  that  will  shake  the  old 
town  from  its  teeth  to  its  toe-nails !  Clotie,  angel,  I  said 
— I  said  just  as  soon  as  I  heard  you  were  coming  up, 
that  you'd  start  something!  Come  to  my  arms,  beloved 
— come  at  least  into  the  living-room,  and  let's  fix  up  this 
thing  so  it'll  explode  with  a  [•  -.per  bang!  " 

Clotilde,  more  saint-like  of  face,  silently  followed  back 
into  the  big  living-room  where  hooded  candles  in  sconces 
on  the  dark  walls  combined  with  the  few  embers  in  the 
huge  stone  fireplace  to  make  a  cozy  pinkish  deception  of 
light. 

"  Take  that  comfy  chair,  dear,"  urged  the  elder 
woman,  motioning  Clotilde  into  the  depths  of  a  big  Bar 
Harbor  rocker  before  the  fire.  "  You  look  tired,  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  53 

you  walk  tired.  Which  is  worse.  Maybe  we'd  better 
let  this  riot  go  over  till  tomorrow  and  just  rest.  We 
wouldn't  have  time  for  much  discussion,  anyway — not 
more  than  half  an  hour.  We're  going  to  have  a  little 
party  this  evening — the  Talbots,  Helen  Hope,  and  Carey 
Beemis.  Arthur  is  out,  now,  collecting  them  in  the  car." 

Clotilde  said,  a  bit  too  casually :  "  I  hope  friend  hus 
band  is  well — and  painting  many  good  landscapes  ?  " 

"  He's  been  doing  darned  little  lately."  Mrs.  Arthur, 
moved  by  Clotilde's  tone,  glanced  at  her  across  the  inter 
vening  gloom.  "  Dear,  if  you  don't  feel  up  to  even  a 
quiet  little  party — if  you'd  rather  just  turn  in — " 

"  It  wasn't  that."  Clotilde  looked  patiently  at  the  fire. 
"  I  was  just  getting  up  the  energy  to  convince  you  that 
it's  perfectly  true  what  I've  told  you  about  my  father. 
It  means  a  good  deal  to  me." 

The  little  woman  was  moved,  and  perplexed.  Highly 
spiced  human  nature,  human  nature  made  tricky,  devious, 
by  the  pressure  of  conventions  upon  dubious  events,  had 
been  her  main  interest  for  so  long  that  Clotilde's  infantile 
simplicity  baffled  her.  Little  dramas  in  which  diverse 
little  truths  were  forced,  by  propriety  and  their  own 
stealthy  natures,  to  wear  their  seven  times  seven  veils 
with  an  air — from  these  Mrs.  Arthur  Kling  could  pick 
out  dominant  and  subordinate  motifs,  plot  and  counter 
plot,  hero,  heroine,  ingenue,  juvenile,  and  heavy.  Any 
truth  more  or  less  bald,  naked,  and  unashamed  har 
monized  neither  with  her  ideas  of  life,  nor  of  art. 

She  peered  at  Clotilde,  narrowing  her  eyes  against  the 
concealments  of  the  low  concealing  lights  that  she  affected 
both  in  her  house  and  in  her  mind. 

"  Really,  Clo' — "     It  was  a  clipped  protest. 


54  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  I  think  it  was  rather  fine  of  my  mother  to  tell  me," 
said  Clotilde,  looking  at  the  fire,  so  wrapped  up  in  her 
own  affairs  that  she  didn't  catch  the  protest.  "  She's 
changed  a  good  deal — especially  since  Mr.  Westbrook's 
death.  I  think  one  might  almost  call  her  Modern — or 
as  Modern  as  any  woman  who  was  brought  up  as  she 
was,  and  fell  into  the  clutches  of  the  Reverend  Percy 
Westbrook,  under  the  circumstances — you  know  he  was 
her  rector,  and  she  thought  of  him  first  when  she  found 
herself  in  trouble — or  at  least  she  considered  it  trouble 
• — when  she  found,  I  mean,  of  course,  that  I — had 
happened." 

"  For — the — everlasting — love — of — Mike! " 

"  Why,  what's  the  matter?  " 

"  I'm  just  discovering  that  I've  been  a  darned  fool 
again,  and  it  always  shocks  me.  Go  on,  dear." 

Clotilde  went  on,  with  a  faint  little  smile  of  triumph : 
"  You  didn't  believe  me,  did  you  ?  And  yet  I  thought 
you  would — right  away.  Surely  my  case  isn't  any  dif 
ferent  from  hundreds  of  others  you've  heard  of  ?  " 

"  No,  it  isn't;  but  you  are,  dear — you're  rather  dif 
ferent  from  anyone  I  ever  heard  of!  Perhaps  that's 
because  I'm  not,  after  all,  very  Modern." 

"  Why,  I  thought  you  were!  " 

"  I  think  so,  too — periodically.  But  you  know  my 
definition  of  a  Modern  woman?  A  woman  whom  noth 
ing  can  shock  is  Modern!  I  admit  I'm  still  subject  to 
shocks.  Then — your  mother  told  you  ?  " 

"Yes;  very  simply,  frankly,  and  very — very  beauti 
fully.  She  said  she'd  often  wanted  to  tell  me  before, 
but  that  Percy — "  The  name  was  a  reviling.  " — had 
urged  her  to  promise  that  she  wouldn't  until  I  was  an 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  55 

old  woman,  or  married,  so  that  I'd  '  understand ' — and 
she'd  half-way  promised.  When  I  was  born,  she  wanted 
to  call  me  '  Clotilde  Hooghtyling  Westbrook,'  but  Percy 
wouldn't  hear  of  it,  so  she  compromised  pn  '  Smith ' : 
even  then,  after  he'd  convinced  her  that  she  was  vile 
and  sinful  and  filled  her  with  humble  gratitude  by  marry 
ing  her  to  save  her  from  '  shame/  she  had  wicked  im 
pulses  toward  the  Truth.  '  Smith  '  was  her  first  rebellion, 
and  her  rebellion  went  on  until  she  was  ready  to  leave  him 
when  his  stomachic  cancer  developed,  and  she  had  to  turn 
to  and  nurse  him  until  he  died.  It  was  a  bitter  marriage 
for  her,  for  all  everybody  thought  it  so  fine — and  would 
have  thought  it  a  thousand  times  finer  if  they'd  known 
all  the  circumstances!  But  no  one  ever  guessed — the 
Reverend  Percy  was  an  accomplished  liar,  I  gather,  on 
all  counts. — Why,  you  know,  he  always  kept  away  from 
me,  could  hardly  bear  to  see  me,  because  he  said  I  re 
minded  him  of  my  mother's  sin — jealous  male  brute  that 
he  was !  And  he  informed  a  dear  lady  parishioner,  who 
repeated  it  to  me  at  his  funeral  as  a  sign  of  his  saintli- 
ness,  that  it  was  painful  for  him  to  see  me  because  he 
could  not  but  be  reminded  of  the  pain  it  had  cost  my 
dear  mother  to  bring  me  into  the  world!  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  she  had  an  exceptional  easy  time  with  me — and 
she  always  looked  back  on  that  pain  as  one  of  the  sweetest 
parts  of  life. — Good  God — he  even  told  that  estimable 
lady  parishioner  that  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  have 
any  more  children  because  he  couldn't  bear  the  thought 
of  my  mother's  suffering — as  if  he  hadn't  tried,  in  his 
own  words,  to  make  my  mother  as  deeply  and  truly  his 
as  she  had  been  that  other  man's — only  to  prove  that  he 
was  as  sterile  of  body  as  he  was  of  mind  1 " 


56  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Clotilda  paused,  exuding  bitterness.  Mrs.  Kling 
breathed,  "Gracious  Heavens!"  "Why?"  asked  the 
girl.  "  I'm  almost  beginning  to  fear  I'm  not  Modern  at 
all,"  explained  Mrs.  Kling. 

"  Well,  I  try  to  be,"  said  Clotilde.  "  Modern  means 
to  me  just  finding  out  the  truth,  calling  things  by  their 
real  names,  and  trying  to  live  up  to  facts.  Maybe  I've 
found  out  more  things  than  most  Modern  young  women 
because  I  had  a  lonely  childhood,  and  a  mind  that 
had  to  wonder.  You  know  the  Reverend  Percy 
kept  my  mother  so  busy  fetching  and  carrying  for 
him  that  I  was  practically  an  orphan  until  he  died." 
There  was  no  sign  of  boasting  about  her,  either  of 
her  knowledge  or  of  her  misfortunes.  "  But  I'm  not 
so  very  different  from  a  good  many  other  young 
women  of  my  age — I  mean,  not  more  Modern — am  I, 
Edna?" 

"  Well — yes,  and  no."  Edna  had  been  deeply  serious 
for  a  longer  time  than  usual,  but  she  rose  to  the  question. 
"  I've  just  been  reading  Henry  James'  '  Daisy  Miller,' — 
comparing  her  to  you  Modern  girls  of  her  age,  you  know. 
It  was  interesting.  It  struck  me  that  you  Modern 
maidens,  especially  you  Modernistic  ones,  are  exposed  to 
diseases  of  knowledge  and  experience  that  would  have 
killed  a  Daisy  Miller  of  a  few  years  ago  with  great 
agony  and  thoroughness.  And  yet  you  remain  healthy 
— apparently:  healthier  than  I  do,  mixture  of  the  past 
and  present  that  I  am!  You  especially,  Clotilde,  for  all 
you  know — and  what  you've  been  through  the  Lord  only 
knows ! — you  remind  me,  time  and  again,  of  a  great  big 
round-eyed  innocent  kid  !  I  suppose  you're  only  different 
in  degree,  in  purity  of  essence,  rather  than  in  quality, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  57 

from  many  Modern  maidens.  Have  you  ever  read 
'Daisy  Miller'?" 

"  No.  I've  read  '  The  Golden  Bowl/  and  dipped  into 
a  few  others.  But  continuous  adultery,  hinted  at,  played 
with,  gets  nauseating." 

"  I  thought  a  good  many  of  you  Modernists  believed 
in  adultery?  " 

"  I  don't.  Because  somebody  is  usually  getting  de 
ceived,  lied  to.  The  truth  first.  I'm  thinking  of  con 
cealed,  and  Jamesesque  literary,  adultery,  of  course. 
Open  adultery  isn't  any  worse  now  than  in  the  time  of 
George  Eliot — and  George  Sand.  Nor  any  better." 

"  Well,  I  perceive  that  you're  a  sister  to  the  well-known 
Daniel,  all  right !  "  Mrs.  Kling  laughed,  and  became  more 
her  usual  sprightly  self.  She  surveyed  Clotilde  with  nar 
rowed  eyes  and  a  face  that  suggested  considerable  inner 
consideration  of  Clotilde's  revelations.  "  But,  say,  Miss 
Modernist — "  She  smiled  quizzically,  dubiously.  '  You 
aren't  really  serious  in  your  intention  to — to  spread  your 
ancestry  abroad,  are  you  ?  " 

"  I  certainly  am !  I  have  a  right  to  my  father.  I 
think  I  have  some  claims  on  him.  He  accepted  a  certain 
responsibility  when  he  became  my  father,  didn't  he?  " 

"  Uh — not  consciously — would  you  say?  " 

But  Clotilde  was  too  much  concerned  with  Truth  to 
appreciate  levity.  "  That  makes  no  difference  whatever. 
He  ought  to  have  realized  his  responsibility.  So  ought 
my  mother.  The  truth  about  me  ought  to  come  out  to 
make  people  realize  that  responsibility,  if  for  no  other 
reason.  It's  keeping  the  truth,  the  responsibility,  so 
carefully  covered  up,  that  makes  so  much  misery  possible. 
Why,  just  for  one  thing,  the  children  of  unmarried 


58  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

parents  have  only  one-fourth  the  chance  of  reaching  their 
twentieth  year  that  the  children  of  parents  who  accept 
their  responsibilities  have!  I've  been  endangered,  in 
body  and  even  more  in  mind,  as  thousands,  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  other  illegitimate  children  are  being  en 
dangered — " 

"  Really,  Clo' — for  the  Lord's  sake,  let's  have  a  cig 
arette  !  Here  1 " 

Clotilde  pushed  aside  the  offered  humidor.  She  was 
aroused,  poignantly  determined.  "  I've  been  under  a 
handicap — even  though  I've  been  luckier  than  most 
fatherless  children:  I've  had  to  miss  the  joy  and  sweet 
ness  of  having  a  father,  of  having  the  counsel  and  mas 
culine  guidance  of  a  father  on  which  a  daughter  is 
especially  dependent,  just  as  a  son  is  especially  dependent 
on  his  mother.  If  I'm  unbalanced — which  I  don't  admit 
— my  lonely  childhood  may  have  had  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  it.  I  wish  to  Heaven  my  mother  had  married  a 
good  and  Modernistic  man,  instead  of  that  smooth,  lying, 
sanctimonious,  archaic  hypocrite,  the  Reverend  Percy 
Westbrook — a  man  whom  I  could  have  loved,  and  hon 
ored,  and  called  father — for,  to  tell  the  truth,  this  after 
noon  has  made  me  afraid  that  old  Mr.  Hooghtyling  isn't 
in  a  position  to  be  a  good  father  to  me.  And  yet  he's 
got  such  a  lot  I  expected  him  to  have — and  a  lot  more — 
such  good  old  wisdom  of  experience,  that  I  haven't  got, 
and  sadly  need.  I  won't  give  that  old  farmer  up  yet — 
even  if  he  does  object — " 

"I'll  bet—"  Mrs.  Kling  stifled  a  hysterical  little 
laugh.  " — you  won't!  " 

"  No,  I  won't !  Am  I  anything  he  has  a  right  to  be 
ashamed  of?  Why,  I  could  make  his  life  broader,  richer 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  59 

— just  as  he  could  mine.  Only  knowing  about  him  has 
— I  always  wondered,  for  instance,  why  I  loved  pine 
groves,  why  the  sound  of  the  wind  in  tall  pines  at  night 
made  me  thrill  and  quiver  all  over — now  I  know!  It 
was  one  glorious  midnight,  down  in  Morseley's  pine 
grove — think  of  it,  Edna! — right  down  in  Morseley's 
grove — when  it  was  younger,  and  more  beautiful,  and 
larger  than  it  is  now — with  only  one  little  brown  bunga 
low  in  it  instead  of  half  a  dozen — it  was  in  that  little 
brown  bungalow  that  they — that  I — " 

Mrs.  Kling  gasped :  "  Here,  dear — do  have  a  cigarette ! 
This  is  an  occasion  that  demands  the  soothing  influence 
of  cigarettes!  You're  all  excited — and  I  confess  this  is 
getting  almost  too  much  for  my  nerves! " 

Clotilde  declined,  with  some  petulance :  "  I  don't  care 
for  a  cigarette,  thanks.  I  smoke  cigarettes  as  Sherlock 
Holmes  took  his  cocaine — when  I'm  bored  with  life.  I'm 
not  bored  now.  I've  always  wanted  a  father — it  has 
been  one  of  the  crying  needs  of  my  life — and  now  that 
I've  found  one,  I'm  not  going  to  let  him  hang  back, 
neglecting  both  his  duty  and  his  privilege — " 

"  Oh,  ye  gods!  " 

"  I  won't  give  him  up  for  any  beastly  old-fashioned 
ideas  of  morality — nor  for  anybody  else!  I  don't  think 
he'd  object  so  much  for  himself — he's  an  awfully  sane 
old  rube — but,  Edna,  he's  got  a  wife!  She  weighs  two 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds — or  more — has  cold,  belligerent 
blue  eyes,  a  hand  like  a  ham — is  accustomed  to  build 
stone  walls  in  her  spare  time — " 

"  Clo-tilde!   Ha-ha-ha— Ha-ha-ha !    For  pity's  sake—" 

"  This  Amazon — she  rushed  up  to  me,  and  pushed  me, 
Edna — why,  I  thought  a  Kansas  cyclone  had  struck  me! 


60  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

I  was  looking  after  him  in  precisely  the  proper  way,  too 
— giving  him  first  aid — you  see,  he,  my  father,  fainted — 
he's  a  poor  little  withered  man,  a  broken-down  farmer, 
and  he  has  a  weak  heart — and  I'd  been  talking  to  him — 
rather  excitedly,  perhaps, — not  thinking — " 

"Hee-ee-ee!  He'd  need  some  heart  if  you  really 
open  up  on  him — Ha-eeh !  Oo-eeh!  And  the  lady  stone 
mason —  Uh,  uh,  eeh!  Clo-tilde!  I'm  having  hys- 
/ erics!  lam!  Hee-ee-ee!  Clotilde!" 

"  Don't  be  foolish,  Edna;  I'm  telling  you  nothing  to 
get  excited  about.  I'm  telling  you  nothing  but  the  plain, 
simple,  unadorned  truth.  It  was  sickening;  I  think  I 
have  every  right  to  feel  aggrieved.  I  told  the  woman, 
Ethel  is  her  name,  that  I  was  his  daughter,  that  he  was 
my  father — and  I  had  a  right  to  help  him — but  she  dis 
regarded  me — after  pushing  me  aside  like  so  much  alley 
dirt — I  don't  think  she  even  heard  me — she  just  picked 
him  up — imagine  it,  Edna, — she  picked  him  up  as  if 
she  had  been  the  Strong  Lady  in  a  circus,  and  he  the 
Living  Skeleton — " 

But  Edna,  who  had  ill-advisedly  tried  to  restrain  her 
self  in  order  to  imbibe  more  pure,  unadulterated  truth, 
quite  suddenly  went  to  pieces.  She  screamed  horrifically, 
waved  her  arms  in  the  air,  babbled,  "  Water! "  and 
"  Hysterics — I  tell  you  I've  got  'em — don't  sit  there — 
get  me  some  water! "  and  so  checked  the  supply  of  truth 
at  its  source. 

With  admirable  celerity,  in  view  of  the  unfortunate 
effects  of  an  attempt  to  apply  first  aid  to  another  victim 
of  her  pure  truth  earlier  that  same  day,  Clotilde  fetched 
water  from  the  kitchen  and  brought  Mrs.  Kling  around. 
]Wbodbridge's  cleverest  gossip  emerged  a  damp,  di- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  61 

sheveled,  wabbly,  pallid  wreck,  from  successive  fits  of 
laughing,  crying,  and  chattering,  all  interspersed  by  con 
siderable  screams. 

"  Damnation ! "  she  gasped ;  "  and  /  haven't  a  weak 
heart,  either!  I  don't  know  when  I've  given  way  like 
that — but,  merciful  Heavens — "  She  shuddered,  sighed, 
pressed  her  head  against  Clotilde's  ministering  shoulder. 
"  I  suppose  it's  partly  because  the  beastly  war  has  put 
my  nerves  on  the  blink,"  she  surmised  feebly. 

Clotilde  apologized :  "  Well,  I'm  sorry  if  my  little 
troubles  were  the  last  straw."  She  added :  "  I  rather 
thought  I'd  escape  the  war,  up  here  in  rustic  Wood- 
bridge." 

"Well,  you  won't,"  sighed  Edna;  "although  one 
reason  I  was  so  glad  to  see  you  was  because  I  thought 
we  might  be  able  to  stir  up  some  counter-excitement  to 
take  everybody's  mind  off  that  beastly  topic — thank  God 
for  your  lady  stone-mason,  and  reluctant  pa — they  may 
do  poor  Artie  as  much  good  as  they  have  me — even 
though  I  may  seem,  just  at  present — "  She  paused, 
raised  her  head,  listened  a  moment,  and  subsided.  "  How 
appropriate — they're  coming!"  she  announced,  with  a 
weak,  semi-hysterical  chuckle.  "  Arthur,  the  dear 
Talbots,  Helen  Hope,  who  has  nerves — and  no  wonder, 
with  her  appurtenance — and  sprightly  Carey — I  hear  the 
car!  How  beautiful — your  debut — holding  a  trophy  of 
your  prowess — "  She  raised  her  voice,  shuddered  con 
vulsively  with  unsuppressible  joy:  "  But,  dear,  trust  me 
— whatever  happens  I  won't  permit — ha-ee! — I  won't 
permit  anybody  to  push  you!  Hee-ah!" 

She  screamed  frightfully  into  Clotilde's  ear,  and  re 
turned  to  the  depths  of  hysterics.  Stimulated  feet 


62  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

resounded  on  the  front  porch;  Mr.  Arthur  Kling  rushed 
into  view,  all  eyes  and  mouth,  gathered  the  salient  feature 
of  the  situation  at  a  glance,  pushed  Clotilde  violently  out 
of  the  way,  picked  up  his  wife  bodily.  "  Edna — Edna, 
dearest! "  he  besought  her,  carrying  her  over  to  a  con 
venient  divan. 

But  Edna,  having  preserved  consciousness  long  enough 
to  see  Clotilde  pushed,  sent  a  peal  of  maniacal  laughter 
into  his  face,  and  relaxed  in  a  dead  faint. 

Then  there  was  much  hurrying  to  and  fro,  more  water, 
knocking  over  of  chairs,  subdued  exclamations,  and  half 
a  glass  of  brandy.  Through  it  all,  standing  with  out 
raged  dignity  in  a  corner  of  the  room,  Clotilde  looked 
on,  quite  as  she  had  looked  on  at  a  somewhat  similar 
proceeding  in  a  corner  of  Henry  Hooghtyling's  orchard, 
a  few  hours  before.  Being  in  possession  of  more  truth 
about  the  trouble  than  the  others,  she  knew  that  matters 
were  not  serious,  and  Edna's  speedy  return  to  conscious 
ness  vindicated  her. 

"  Where's  Clotilde — where's  that  blessed  girl?"  were 
Edna's  first  words. 

Thus  summoned,  Clotilde  did  not  emulate  her  digni 
fied,  unnoticed  escape  of  the  orchard  escapade.  She 
walked,  with  some  austerity,  over  to  the  sofa  where 
Edna  was  lying  in  state,  surrounded  by  Talbots, 
Miss  Helen  Hope,  Carey  Beemis,  and  especially  by  Mr. 
Kling. 

"  My  dear — it  was  more  than  worth  it ! "  said  Edna, 
holding  out  her  hand.  "  Artie  ?  " 

Mr.  Kling,  immediately  stirred  in  his  hostly  instincts, 
stammered :  "  Why — Miss  Westbrook — Clotilde — pardon 
me,  really — in  the  excitement  of  the  moment — "  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  63 

offered  to  shake  hands.  Clotilde,  softening  into  smiles, 
shook  hands  with  him.  He  was  a  lanky,  loose-jointed, 
over-nosed  gentleman,  with  sharply  retreating  chin  and 
forehead,  an  engaging  ensemble  of  humanity  that,  as 
sisted  always  by  a  determined  vacuousness  of  expression 
and  a  baby's-eyebrow  of  a  mustache,  had  the  general 
effect  of  a  cane-sucking  Piccadilly,  Unter  den  Linden, 
or  Fifth  Avenue  swell.  Edna  had  become  interested  in 
him  because  it  cheered  her  up  just  to  look  at  him,  and 
married  him  because  he  was  equally  fine-fibered  as  man 
and  artist.  Though  there  were  Prussians  in  his  an 
cestry,  his  every-day  activities  suggested  that  he  had  the 
soul  of  a  conscientious,  beauty-loving  rabbit. 

"  You  see,  dear,  he  didn't  recognize  you,  or  he  wouldn't 
have  pushed  you,"  Edna  contributed  faintly  from  the 
couch;  tf  would  you,  Arthur?  " 

"  Certainly  not — purely  an  accident — thousand  pardons 
— momentarily  forgot  myself,"  murmured  Arthur,  over 
come  with  contrition. 

"  And  the  dear  Talbots,  Gracey  and  Paul,  I  think 
you've  met  ?  "  continued  Mrs.  Kling,  managing  to  get 
some  customary  zest  out  of  playing  hostess,  horizontal 
and  enfeebled  though  she  was.  "  And  Helen  Hope — our 
sufficient  proof  that  Greenwich  Village  has  nothing  on 
Woodbridge  ?  "  Clotilde  smiled  and  bowed.  "  But  Mr. 
Carey  Beemis  I  don't  think  you've  met.  Miss  Clotilde — 
ah— Miss  Clotilde— ah  ?  " 

"  Westbrook ! "  supplied  Mr.  Kling,  in  a  spasmodic 
undertone,  giving  a  suggestion  of  secrecy  by  putting  his 
right  palm  up  to  the  end  of  his  mustache. 

"  Ah,  yes — Miss  Clotilde  Westbrook,  of  course." 
Edna  smiled  wanly.  "  My  mind,  it  seems,  has  not  quite 


&4  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

recovered.  For  a  moment,  dear,  I  was  in  doubt  about 
your  last  name — think  of  it !  I  hope — " 

Clotilde  interrupted  evenly :  "  It  might  be  better  if 
you'd  just  introduce  me  by  my  real  name,  Hooghty- 
ling — "  but  Mr.  Carey  Beemis,  advancing  with  out 
stretched  hand,  beamingly  unconscious  of  the  sick-room 
atmosphere,  drowned  her  out  with  a  vigorous :  "  Say, 
this  is  a  real  pleasure!"  He  received  her  hand  in  a 
grasp  that  was  at  once  firm  and  gentle,  administered 
several  throbbing  little  pressures.  "  I've  just  missed 
meeting  you  a  hundred  times — back  in  the  Village,  you 
know, — always  hearing  about  you.  Edna  was  telling 
me,  only  this  morning  down  at  the  post  office,  that  you 
were  expected,  and,  believe  me,  I've  been  on  the  qui  vive 
ever — " 

"  Although  it  does  seem  strange,"  put  in  Edna,  in  a 
voice  faint  but  thrilling  as  if  drawn  from  subconscious 
distances,  "  Clo',  dear,  that,  since  you've  met  Miss  Hope, 
you  haven't  met  Mr.  Beemis,  also." 

A  distinct  vibration,  almost  a  shock,  carrying  a  dis 
tressful  silence  in  its  wake,  penetrated  the  group,  from 
Talbots  to  Mr.  Beemis,  lingering  particularly  around  the 
handsome,  athletic,  sprightly  personality  of  Mr.  Beemis. 
"  Oh — I'm  afraid  that  was  not  thoughtful,"  Edna  apolo 
gized  doubtfully,  innocently;  "  I'm  afraid  it's  the  brandy 
— that,  and  the  hundred-proof  pure  Truth  that  Clotilde 
has  been  regaling  me  with.  I  always  like  my  Truth  with 
a  little  water  in  it — or  at  least  a  chaser — and  Clotilde's 
brand  is — heady  in  the  extreme." 

Miss  Hope  divertingly  asked :  "  Has  Miss  Westbrook 
been  shocking  you  ?  "  and  looked  at  Clotilde  with  a  mix 
ture  of  mock  and  genuine  asperity,  moods  which  became 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  65 

the  austerity  of  a  person  and  dress  that  might  have  in 
spired  cubistic  art.  Helen  Hope's  face  was  an  almost 
perfect  parallelogram,  her  mouth  was  large  and  straight, 
her  eyebrows  were  straight  black  lines,  even  the  forma 
tion  of  her  large  dark  eyes  and  heavy,  flat-tipped  nose 
was  cubistic.  She  wore  a  frock  of  brown  woolen  home 
spun,  cut  with  the  squareness  of  a  gunny  sack,  square- 
cut  at  the  throat,  and  her  black  hair  was  "  bobbed  "  with 
mathematical  accuracy.  Even  in  that  ultra-Modernistic 
section  of  New  York  City  called  Greenwich  Village  there 
were  few  young  ladies  more  ultra-Modernistic  in  appear 
ance,  theory,  and  practice.  Comparison  with  her  was 
enough  to  make  Clotilde  seem  downright  old-fashioned. 

"  Yes,  Clo'  has  been  shocking  me — magnificently," 
admitted  Mrs.  Kling.  "Haven't  you,  dearie?"  She 
took  Clotilde's  unresponsive  hand.  "  Clo'  has  given  me 
a  succession  of  such  delightful  shocks  that  I  don't  regret 
my  hysterics  one  bit.  And  now,  if  the  others  will  kindly 
excuse  us,  dear — "  Edna  gingerly  sat  up  and  felt  for 
her  back  hair.  "  I  think  I'll  let  you  make  amends  by 
escorting  me  as  far  as  my  bedroom,  and  helping  me  get 
to  rights  a  bit." 

Clotilde  submissively  escorted  the  elder  woman  across 
the  living-room,  and  into  seclusion.  "  What  shall  I  do, 
Edna — will  you  let  me  fix  your  hair  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  will  not,"  said  Edna.  "  I'm  perfectly  capable  of 
fixing  my  own  hair — I'm  quite  all  right.  I  just  wanted 
to  get  you  alone  to  warn  you  that  there's  every  indication 
that  Carey  Beemis  intends  to  start  campaigning  for  you 
at  once;  and  I  thought  I  ought  to  warn  you  that,  when 
ever  Carey  starts  a  new  campaign,  which  he  does  on  the 
average  of  once  a  month,  poor  Helen  has  doldrums  that 


66  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

would  make  my  recent  exercise  look  like  a  plugged  nickel. 
He  belongs  to  her,  you  know." 

Clotilde  asked :  "  Do  people  still  belong  to  each  other?  " 

"  Don't  be  foolish."  Edna  finished  coiling  up  her  hair, 
and  fluffed  out  the  grayish  strands  at  her  temples.  "  Of 
course,  I  know  all  the  moralistic  Modernistic  patter,  my 
dear — it's  especially  interesting  as  delivered  by  Helen — 
perfect  sex  freedom,  and  all  that  dope.  But,  just  the 
same,  Carey  is  her  appurtenance.  She  tries  to  be  philo 
sophical,  but  she  bleeds  at  every  pore  whenever  he  shows 
signs  of  putting  his  mutually  agreed  upon  freedom  into 
practice.  Why  on  earth  she's  so  crazy  about  him  I  can't 
imagine — maybe  it's  because  she  isn't  married  to  him. 
Of  course  she  makes  herself  a  burden  by  sticking  to  him 
like  a  burr — as  no  intelligent,  lawful  wife  who  had  any 
sense  ever  would — high  price  she  pays,  it  seems  to  me, 
for  being  Modernistically  free — and  I  suppose  it's  equally 
hard  on  him.  I've  been  urging  them  to  get  married;  then 
it  would  be  easier  for  them  to  separate — and  they  cer 
tainly  ought  to  separate. — I  suppose  you  wouldn't  agree 
with  all  this  ?  " 

"  Jealousy  isn't  confined  to  Modernists,"  said  Clotilde. 

"  Well — all  right.  I  just  wanted  to  warn  you  that, 
if  you  let  Carey  attach  himself  to  you,  as  he  certainly 
intends  to  do  if  he  can,  you'll  run  the  danger  of  putting 
Helen  into  an  insane  asylum — or  an  untimely  tomb. 
That  was  one  thing.  Another  was,  dear—"  Edna  hesi 
tated.  "  I  may  be  quite  wrong,  but  I  wanted  to  urge 
you  to  put  off  announcing  your — change  of  name — for 
a  little  while.  You  quite  gave  me  cold  chills  when  you 
accepted  the  opening  that  I  was  foolish  enough  to  give 
you — luckily  Carey  rushed  into  the  breach !  .The  fact  is, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  67 

dear,  I  was  thinking  it  might  be  hard  on  that  old  farmer 
— especially  if  his  wife,  and  the  neighbors,  don't  take  it 
in  a  sensible,  Modern  way.  And,  forgive  me,  dear,  but 
I  was  thinking  a  little  of — of  your  own  mother,  too.  You 
see,  I'm  ten  years  older  than  you  are,  Clo';  I  hope  you 
won't  think  I'm  merely  an  old-fashioned,  meddling — " 

"  Not  at  all — I  don't — but  I  do  think,  Edna,  you  ought 
to  give  me  credit  for  taking  my  mother  into  considera 
tion."  Clotilde  walked  about  the  room,  clear-eyedly  re 
flective,  considerate.  "  It  was  pretty  fine  of  her  to  tell 
me — and  it  was  equally  fine  of  her  to  admit  that  I  had 
every  right  to  see  my  father, — to  tell  him,  and  to  tell 
my  friends,  everybody  I  wanted  to.  The  only  condition 
she  made  was  that  I  shouldn't  ask  her  to  see  him.  Of 
course  I  think  she  was  wrong — she's  gone  off  to  Cali 
fornia  for  a  two-months'  visit  for  fear  I'd  convert  her — " 

"  I  sympathize  with  her !  "  put  in  Edna. 

"  Well,  if  I  give  up  making  the  matter  public,  for  the 
present  at  least,  I  do  think  that  my  father,  poor,  old,  over 
worked,  broken,  gentle-man  that  he  is,  should  have  the 
benefits  that  I  can  give  him — yes,  and  that  I  should  have 
the  benefits  he  can  give  me,  too!  We  have  a  right  to 
each  other.  His  present  wife  must  recognize  that  I,  his 
daughter,  have  some  rights  she  is  bound  to  respect! 
Why,  they  may  have  a  mortgage  on  their  home — any 
way,  a  few  hundred  dollars  wouldn't  come  amiss  up 
there,  I  know — and  I'd  like  to  travel  a  little  while  with 
him,  my  father — get  him  some  new  clothes — teach  him 
things — have  him  teach  me!  I  want  to  board  up  there, 
at  least — haven't  I  a  right  to  get  acquainted  with  my 
own  father  ?  Especially  when  I'm  ready  and  anxious  to 
do  so  many  things  for  him — why,  just  to  mention  one 


68  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

little  detail,  he  ought  to  have  all  his  horrible  old  snags  of 
teeth  removed — I  couldn't  help  noticing  the  state  of  his 
teeth  when  he  was  unconscious  in  my  arms — and  a  nice 
set  of  false  teeth  in  their  place.  No  wonder  he  isn't 
healthy  with  such  horrible,  black,  malodorous — really, 
Edna,  it  was  awful !  Probably  he's  had  no  one  to  point 
out  their  danger  to  his  health — and  probably  he  couldn't 
spare  the  money  if  he  understood  it.  Then,  too,  I'm  sure 
they  have  no  bathroom  in  the  house;  he — he  didn't  seem 
altogether  antiseptic,  Edna !  " 

Edna  suggested  weakly :  "  But,  dear,  couldn't  you  find 
a  way  of  presenting  him  with  a  set  of  teeth,  and  a  bath 
room,  without  getting  him  in  wrong  with  his  wife?  " 

"  I  seriously  doubt  it."  Clotilde  strode  across  the  little 
room  with  the  lowered  eyes  and  knit  brows  of  a  strate- 
gizing  general.  "  I  think  there's  no  doubt  but  that  his 
wife  keeps  him  under  her  big,  brawny  thumb — he  seemed 
fairly  terrified,  actually  in  fear,  when  he  mentioned  her 
name.  Probably  she  abuses  him  horribly,  leads  him 
around  by  the  nose — Edna,  suppose  your  own  father, 
withered,  broken,  old  before  his  time,  were  in  my  father's 
predicament?  Ethel! — I  fairly  hate  Ethel  already — big 
blonde  tyrant  and  vixen !  And  that  poor,  gentle,  old  half- 
sick  man,  my  own  father — with  Ethel's  big  fist  and  big 
voice  driving  him — " 

"  I  pass — let's  go  out  now,  dear,"  Edna  interrupted 
faintly.  "  I  see  you've  got  more  dope  on  this  matter  than 
I  have.  Especially  about  Ethel.  My  sympathies  are 
divided,  however.  I  begin  to  feol  that  Ethel  made  a 
large  mistake  when  she  pushed  you !  " 

"  Seriously,  dear — when  I  think  of  my  poor  old  father 
in  the  power  of  that  woman,  I  shudder! "  said  Clotilde. 


CHAPTER  V 

MR.  HOOGHTYLING  ENDEAVORS  TO  APPLY  BRAKES 
TO  THE  TRUTH,  BUT  DECIDES  THAT,  ALL  THINGS 
CONSIDERED,  YOU  CAN'T  TELL  FROM  THE  LOOKS 
OF  A  FROG  HOW  FUR  IT'LL  JUMP  . 

AT  precisely  five-thirty  the  next  morning,  Henry  placed 
his  angular  right  elbow  against  Ethel's  well-cushioned 
left  fifth  rib,  and  pushed.  He  did  it  delicately,  with  no 
unnecessary  vigor;  even  though  he  had  done  it  on  an 
average  of  three  times  every  morning  for  some  twenty 
years,  he  never  resorted  to  violence  until  violence  was 
proved  unavoidable. 

Ethel  slept  on,  snoring  gently.  Irritation  with  her  for 
being  asleep,  for  having  had  a  somewhat  sonorous  night's 
rest  while  he  had  been  unable  to  close  his  eyes,  made  him 
put  a  shade  more  shock  than  usual  into  Push  No.  2. 

Ethel  awoke.     "  Yes,  Hen,"  she  said. 

"  It's  five-thirty,  Ethel,"  he  told  her,  with  crispness 
that  years  of  repetition  had  not  staled. 

"  Yes,  Hen."  She  sat  up  in  bed,  rubbing  her  eyes, 
blinking  cheerfully  at  the  weather  through  the  little  half- 
opened  lace-curtained  window  beside  the  bed.  "  It's  go 
ing  to  be  a  fine  day.  For  all  it's  Saturday,  I  think  I'll 
just  get  the  washings  cleared  out  o'  the  way.  Then  I 
can  go  right  at  picklin',  come  Monday,"  she  announced 
with  sprightliness  and  decision. 

"  Well,  you'll  never  get  at  neither  washin'  nor  picklin' 
if  you  don't  get  up." 

69 


70  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Why,  what's  the  matter  with  you  this  mornin', 
Hen  ? "  she  asked,  not  with  any  suggestion  of  fault 
finding  but  with  gentle,  wifely  concern.  She  got  out 
into  the  narrow  aisle  that  separated  the  bed  from  the 
window-wall  of  the  six-by-eight  bedroom,  and  com 
petently,  as  she  did  everything,  began  to  dress.  "  Didn't 
you  rest  well  ?  " 

Henry  showed,  by  silence,  that  he  wasn't  prepared  to 
engage  in  personalities. 

"I'll  bet  I  know  why — after  that — "  She  shut  her 
large  mouth  firmly  on  the  indignant  explanation  that 
seemed  to  have  burst  up,  against  her  will,  from  her 
voluminous  bosom.  "  Excuse  me  for  mentionin'  it — I 
didn't  mean  to  mention  it,  Hen,"  she  apologized. 

Grim  silence  from  Henry. 

"  I  won't  mention  it  any  more,  if  it  troubles  you." 

Henry  wriggled  under  the  bedclothes.  "  That's  what 
you've  promised  a  dozen  times  a'ready,  Ethel,"  he  re 
minded  her  patiently. 

"  Well — and  haven't  I  done  pretty  well  keepin'  that 
promise,  too?  " 

"  Not  but  what  I  could  suggest  a  few  improvements." 

"  Well,  now,  I  think  I  done  pretty  well !  "  Her  voice 
was  all  gentleness,  but  as  she  finished  she  stamped  a  foot 
down  into  a  shoe,  a  neat  shoe  but  a  trifle  too  small  for 
her  foot  as  is  a  lady's  prerogative,  with  a  jar  that  shook 
the  floor.  "  You  ain't  maybe  took  into  consideration  my 
feelin's,  Hen.  It  ain't  so  many  wives,  comin'  down  the 
road  to  find  you  lyin'  with  your  head  in  a  strange 
woman's  lap,  and  she  pattin'  your  face — and  good-lookin', 
too,  and  young — I'll  say  that  for  her — " 

"  Now,  Ethel—" 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  71 

"  Well,  I  just  want  to  say,  Hen,  that  it  ain't  so  many 
wives  would  promise  right  away  not  to  ask  a  question, 
not  to  say  a  word  about  it,  not  to  think  about  it  even! 
I  can't  keep  from  thinkin'  about  it — you  hadn't  ought  to 
have  asked  it  of  me,  Hen !  " 

She  started,  fully  dressed,  for  the  kitchen,  shaking  the 
house  with  the  unconscious  might  and  determination  of 
her  strides. 

"  Well,  leastways,  it  didn't  seem  to  hender  you  from 
restin'  good,"  he  called  after  her.  There  was  relenting 
in  his  voice.  Out  in  the  kitchen,  which  opened  directly 
off  the  bedroom,  stove-lids  were  removed  with  clattering 
vigor,  pine  kindlings  snapped  in  her  powerful  hands. 

"  For  all  you  know,  I  dreamed  about  it,"  she  retorted. 
She  included  in  her  considerable  library  a  large  dream- 
book,  and  read  and  believed  in  it  with  a  devoutness  sug 
gestive  of  a  Modern  disciple  of  Freud. 

"  I'm  always  tellin'  you  there's  nothin'  into  dreams — 
savin',  maybe,  too  much  pie  and  pickles  for  supper ! " 
Hen  announced,  with  some  heat.  She  demurred :  "  Well, 
it  was  less'n  a  month  ago  I  dreamed  of  dogs  fightin',  and 
that  means  a  strange  woman  is  goin'  to  cross  my  path 
and  interfere  with  the  affections  of  my  husband.  Almost 
half  the  dreams  I've  had  ever  since  I  can  remember,  it 
says  under  the  Women's  Interpretation  colyum,  for  me 
to  beware  of  a  strange  woman ;  of  course  I  don't  believe 
into  it—" 

"  Yes,  because  under  'bout  half  all  the  dreams  into 
your  old  book,  it  says  '  Beware  of  a  strange  woman ' ! 
Ain't  I  had  you  read  me  pages  to  show  you  how  foolish 
it  was?  Sometimes  you  give  me  a  pain  strikes  right 
to  my  stummick,  you  do,  Ethel,  for  a  fact !  " 


72  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

That  brought  silence  for  a  little  while;  then,  to  the 
accompaniment  of  a  sizzling  of  frying  pork,  Mrs. 
Hooghtyling  began  again : 

"  I  wouldn't  be  interested  in  all  that  stuff  'bout  strange 
women,  Hen,  nor  I  wouldn't  be  worried  so  much  'bout 
what  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  yestiddy,  but  you  know  I 
always  had  the  feelin'  that  maybe,  some  time,  you  might 
be  tempted  to — to  elope." 

"  Now  don't  go  bringin'  all  that  up  agin,  Ethel !  " 

"  That  somehow  you  wasn't — "  She  distributed  heavy 
crockery  with  a  heavy  hand,  and  her  voice  bespoke  a 
heavy  heart.  " — mine  alone." 

"  Uh-huh !  "  Hen  growled,  really  aroused.  "  You  got 
to  quit  readin'  that  dream-book,  and  all  those  lousy  ten- 
cent  books  you  get  down  to  Kingston,  Ethel,  or  you  got 
to  quit  believin'  such  nonsense — now,  one  o'  two  things 
you  got  to  do !  " 

Ethel  hazarded,  sniffling  a  little :  "  Truth  is  stranger 
than  fiction,  Hen." 

Mr.  Hooghtyling  got  out  of  bed,  began  the  process  of 
dressing  by  kicking  out  his  legs  to  shake  his  night- 
wrinkled  underwear  into  place,  growled,  "  Yes — ac- 
cordin'  to  them  lousy  paper  books !  "  and  put  on  his  pants. 
"  Is  breakfast  'bout  ready?  " 

"  Yes.     Want  your  eggs  boiled  or  fried  ?  " 

"  Boiled  this  mornin';  my  stummick  feels  awful.  And, 
for  that  same  reason,  I  don't  want  to  hear  you  talk  any 
more,  Ethel.  You  got  out  o'  bed  on  the  wrong  side  this 
mornin',  and,  when  a  person  does  that,  they'd  best  keep 
quiet  till  after  breakfast,  anyway." 

They  breakfasted  in  absolute  silence.  While  Henry, 
because  of  the  slowness  in  feeding  which  an  almost  com" 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  73 

plete  lack  of  teeth  imposed  on  him,  still  lingered  over  his 
panny-cakes  and  coffee,  Ethel  finished,  rose  without  a 
word,  took  down  a  red  cloth-bound  book  from  the  clock- 
shelf,  sat  down  beside  the  east  kitchen  window,  and  began 
to  read.  Henry  wrinkled  his  eyes  and  peered  in  an  effort 
to  make  out  whether  she  was  disobeying  instructions. 
"  What  you  readin',  Ethel?  "  he  asked,  at  last. 

"  Tisn't  one  of  those  ten-cent  books  from  Kingston — 
it's  '  Loved  and  Conquered,'  and  Mrs.  Morse  lent  it  to 
me.  It's  a  good  book." 

Henry  expressed  no  opinion,  and  Ethel  read  on  until, 
with  the  ended  breakfast  of  her  lord  and  master,  milking 
time  should  arrive. 

She  had  made  him  a  good  woman.  The  order  and 
cleanliness  of  the  big  kitchen,  from  stove  to  windows, 
the  fresh  lace  curtains,  the  potted  geraniums,  and  par 
ticularly  the  small  eastward  bay-window  where  she  sat  in 
the  morning  sunshine,  spoke  of  her.  By  doing  incredible 
washings  for  artusses  and  summer  boarders,  she  had  paid 
for  having  that  window  put  in.  Thanks  to  their  separate 
financial  arrangements,  by  which  Henry  kept  the  money 
gained  from  eggs,  butter,  and  farm  produce — for  these 
things  came  from  the  farm  which  he  owned,  even  if  her 
work  went  into  the  preparation  of  them — while  she  kept 
the  rewards  of  pie  and  cake  sales,  and  of  washings,  she 
had  recently  presented  him  with  a  new  winter  overcoat, 
herself  with  a  green  silk  gown,  and  had  the  large  satis 
faction  of  having  her  own  works  praise  her  within  her 
gates. 

Everybody  said  she  had  made  him  a  good  woman, 
Henry  first  of  all — although  her  excellence  was  not  to 
have  been  expected,  seeing  that  she  had  been  born  a 


74  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Whipple.  The  Woodbridge  Whipples  were  the  town 
ship's  prize  examples  of  shiftlessness,  drink,  vermin,  and 
degeneration. 

As  a  girl,  Ethel,  barefoot  until  Christmas  and  little 
better  than  barefoot  afterwards,  had  cut  her  cord  of  wood 
a  day,  by  the  side  of  her  only  industrious  brother,  on 
the  old  Whipple  homestead,  a  little  higher  up  the  moun 
tain.  She  had  driven  the  oxen  while  he  held  the  plow, 
helping  to  fight  back  the  sedulous  enemy,  hunger,  of  all 
the  Woodbridge  Whipples.  Her  brother  had  long  since 
gone  the  common  Whipple  way,  helped  by  whisky  that 
was  as  much  an  effect  as  a  cause,  but  Ethel  had  risen. 

She  had  gone  to  school  exactly  one  day  in  her  life,  but, 
at  thirty  years  old,  after  she  had  recovered  from  unsani 
tary  child-bearing  and  fighting  against  odds  that  nearly 
killed  her,  she  had  taught  herself  to  read.  She  had  read 
her  way  through  dream-books,  ten-cent  fiction,  into 
romances  a  little  less  lurid  and  lying,  spurred  on  by  the 
"  artusses  "  for  whom  she  did  washing,  and  with  whom 
she  discussed  literature  and  life.  Her  washing,  her 
peddling  of  strawberries,  blackberries,  raspberries,  and 
huckleberries  in  season,  she  accomplished  with  an  in 
crease,  rather  than  a  loss,  of  her  dignity.  "  Honest 
work's  always  honorable,"  she  was  accustomed  to  an 
nounce,  with  challenging  clarity  of  big  blue  eyes,  and 
her  dignity  increased  with  invariable  agreement.  She 
was  as  dignified,  and  statuesque,  and  determined  in  her 
opinions,  and  as  sure  of  having  her  own  way — granted 
only  that  her  own  way  be,  as  it  generally  was,  the  way 
of  her  aforesaid  lord  and  master — as  any  dowager 
duchess  of  her  favorite  romances. 

"  What  Ethel  hasn't  done ! "   Henry  sometimes  re- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  75 

marked,  shaking  his  head,  overcome  with  awe  and 
admiration  for  his  helpmeet's  numerous  works.  In 
addition  to  stonework  and  excavating,  she  helped  to 
butcher  calves,  beeves,  and  pigs;  and  the  world  was 
yearly  richer  for  the  numerous  calves,  piggies,  chickens, 
eggs,  vegetables,  fruits,  cereals,  preserves,  pickles,  and 
flowers  of  her  propagating,  not  to  mention  her  equally 
important  attainments  in  the  way  of  babies  and  grand- 
babies.  Her  two  sons  and  two  daughters  had  taken  part 
ners  of  her  own  choosing,  and  the  immediate  government 
of  them  all  was  a  matriarchate.  When  wiseacres  spoke 
of  the  degeneration  among  the  Woodbridge  natives,  they 
omitted  mention  of  the  rise  of  Mrs.  Henry  Hoogh- 
tyling. 

Sitting  near  her  shining  kitchen  range,  price  $45  in 
Kingston  five  years  ago,  and  worth  $65  now,  without  a 
gray  hair  in  her  nut-brown  head,  ruddy,  massy,  motherly, 
clear  of  face  and  eye,  perfect  of  teeth,  reading  without 
glasses  at  fifty-one  years  old,  she  looked  the  conqueror 
she  was,  a  sturdy  symbol  of  the  results  of  natural  country 
living.  Her  husband,  broken  and  withered  in  all  save 
mind  in  spite  of  years  fewer  by  seven,  was  another 
symbol  of  the  same  life. 

He  finished,  pushing  back  his  chair  as  a  sign  of  it. 
Ethel  hurriedly  arose,  and  went  into  the  pantry,  leaving 
her  book  on  the  clock-shelf  as  she  passed;  she  emerged, 
bearing  two  large  tin  milking  pails.  Henry,  taking  the 
old  green  hat  from  behind  the  door,  followed  her  weakly 
out  to  the  barn.  While  she  cleaned  out  the  stable  behind 
their  two  cows,  whistling  a  cheerful  accompaniment  to 
the  bumping  of  her  pitchfork  against  the  window-casing 
whence  the  fresh  manure  flew  outward  to  its  proper  pile, 


76  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Henry  engaged  gruntingly  in  the  more  gentle  task  of 
preparing  cow-feed. 

They  all  settled  down,  the  cows  to  munching,  Hooghty- 
ling  man  and  wife  to  milking.  The  younger  cow  was 
both  skittish  and  hard  to  milk,  and  therefore  fell,  by 
right,  to  Ethel. 

"  I  was  talkin'  with  a  man  down  to  Brinkses'  store 
couple  days  ago,"  said  Henry,  with  a  casual  drawl  that 
intimated  important  matter  on  tap. 

"That  so?  Who  was  it?"  asked  Ethel,  from  her 
neighboring  stall. 

"  It  don't  make  no  difference,"  said  Henry. 

"  Slip-slip!     Slip-slip!  "  said  the  milk  in  the  pails. 

"  It  don't,  because,"  Henry  explained  deliberately, 
"  the  important  thing's  what  he  was  tellin'  me,  not  who 
he  was." 

"Slip-slip!"  said  the  milk. 

"  Well — ef  you  ain't  intrusted—  Henry  grunted, 
after  waiting  for  comment. 

"  I  may  be  intrusted,  but  I'm  not  goin'  to  open  my 
mouth  just  to  be  the  same  as  told  to  keep  it  shut !  I  think 
you're  the  one  got  out  o'  bed  on  the  wrong  side,  Hen !  " 
returned  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  with  unusual  spirit. 

"  Aw,  jimminy-crickets — my  stummick's  feelin'  awful 
this  morning — "  apologized  Henry. 

"  And  your  stummick  will  prob'ly  be  awful,  too,  till 
you  have  them  old  teeth  out.  Ain't  I  told  you — and  ain't 
the  doctor  told  you — " 

"  Can't  ev'ybody  git  to  be  fifty  years  old  and  have  ev'y 
tooth  in  their  heads  good  as  new,  like  you,  Ethel,"  he 
told  her. 

"  Sure  not.     But  you  could  have  them  old  snags  out 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  77 

and  some  false  teeth,  if  you  wasn't  such  a  coward  'bout 
goin'  to  the  dentist. — What  was  it  that  man  was  tellin' 
you?" 

Henry  cleared  his  throat  cautiously.  "  Why,  nothin' 
much;  he  was  just  a-tellin'  me,"  said  Henry,  "'bout  a 
man  way  over  in  Columbia  County.  Man  kept  a  groc'ry 
store  over  there.  Ev'ybody  thought  he  was  all  right. 
Old  man  he  was,  married,  honest,  always  paid  his  bills. 
Then  it  comes  out  he's  got  a  daughter  nobody  ever  knew 
about." 

"  Daughter  by  a  prev'ous  marriage?  "  suggested  Mrs. 
Hooghtyling. 

"  As  I  recollect,  he  hadn't  been  married  afore." 

"  Child  not  born  in  wedlock  ?  "  Her  voice  grated  over 
"  wedlock." 

"  Seems  to  me,"  admitted  Henry,  "  'twasn't.  Seems 
the  feller'd  been  kinda  wild  in  his  youth,  long  before  he 
married  his  wife — though  he'd  made  up  for  it  by  bein' 
straight's  a  die  for  years  and  years." 

"  Slip-slip! "  hissed  the  milk,  with  great  vigor,  into 
Ethel's  pail.  "  Such  things  is  just  like  murder — they'll 
always  come  out ! "  announced  Ethel. 

"  There  you  go — f ormin'  judgments !  "  Henry  was 
both  disgusted  and  indignant.  "  How  many  times  I  told 
you,  Ethel,  not  to  go  formin'  judgments  till  you  got 
more'n  a  word  or  two  o'  hearsay  to  go  by?  " 

Mrs.  Hooghtyling  protested :  "  Why,  Hen,  I  didn't 
express  no  judgment — " 

"  Comparin'  it  to  murder!  " 

"  Well—" 

"Well?" 

Mrs.  Hooghtyling's  spunk  mastered  her ;  "  If  it  ain't's 


78  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

bad's  murder,  it's  almost — and  you  needn't  go  try  arguin' 
me  out  of  it,  Hen  Hooghtyling — for  I've  got  the  Good 
Book  to  back  me  up — and  what  does  it  say  about  a  man 
that  lusteth  after  a  woman?  You  can't  get  around  that 
— you're  just  contrairey  this  mornin',  Hen — and  maybe 
you  got  good  cause,  too !  "  The  milking  of  the  younger 
and  harder  cow,  which  had  been  suspended  during  this 
outburst,  was  resumed  at  double  speed. 

Henry,  after  waiting  for  the  atmosphere  to  cool  a 
little,  grunted,  spat,  and  remarked :  "  I  might  a-knowed 
you'd  take  it  like  that,  Ethel — forget  yourself — " 

"  You  know,  Hen  Hooghtyling,  in  your  heart,"  Ethel 
interrupted,  "you  take  it  just  the  same  way;  but 
you're  contrairey,  and  won't  admit  it.  Tell  the  truth 
once,  now,  and  shame  the  Devil — don't  you — in  your 
heart?" 

"  You're  wrong, — but  they  ain't  no  use  arguin'  with 
you  when  you're  by  way  o'  forgettin'  yourself,"  returned 
Henry;  but  his  words  carried  so  little  conviction  that 
Ethel,  shortly  afterward,  began  to  whistle  in  high  good 
humor.  She  was  always  much  cheered  up  when  she 
forced  him  to  admit  that  she  was  even  half-way  right  on 
any  of  their  few  points  of  disagreement. 

Ethel,  still  cheerful,  carried  the  two  pails  of  milk  into 
the  house,  leaving  Henry  to  feed  the  pigs,  release  and 
feed  the  chickens,  and  gather  the  eggs.  He  pottered 
rheumatically  over  his  morning  chores,  grunting  to  him 
self,  scowling  at  nothing,  thinking  hard.  Toward  seven 
o'clock  he  slouched  through  the  kitchen,  where  Ethel  was 
busy  sorting  out  the  two  Woodbridge  washings  to  which 
departing  summerites  had  reduced  her  former  weekly  six, 
silently  entered  the  bedroom  and  began  to  dress  himself 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  79 

in  his  Sunday  clothes.  He  reappeared,  fifteen  minutes 
later,  outwardly  changed  in  everything  but  the  faded 
green  hat.  In  his  sagging  black  city  suit,  his  low  white 
collar — grown  at  least  four  sizes  too  large  for  his 
scrawny  neck — he  looked  more  than  ever  like  a  dis 
couraged  turkey  gobbler. 

"  Seein's  you  keep  talkin'  'bout  it  so  infernal  much, 
Ethel,"  he  announced,  "  callin'  me  a  coward,  and  all  that 
— I'm  goin'  down  to  Kingston  and  have  them  teeth  out! 
I'm  goin' — "  He  became  somewhat  tragic.  " — to  face 
the  music ! " 

Mrs.  Hooghtyling  gasped :  "  Well,  say !  I'm  glad  of 
it !  But  whatever's  got  into  you  ?  " 

He  passed  her  in  silent  dignity,  as  grim  and  determined 
as  if  he  had  just  volunteered  for  extra-hazardous  service. 
She  beamed  after  him.  "  Anything  you  want  down  to 
Kingston  ?  "  he  asked  from  the  door. 

"If  you'll  come  back  with  them  old  snags  out,  I'll  be 
satisfied,"  she  retorted,  still  suffering  from  joyful  shock. 
"  I  won't  burden  your  mind  with  anything  else — you 
might  forget  what  you  went  after !  Tee-hee !  "  she 
simpered  opulently  between  her  large  white  teeth.  He 
glared  at  her,  and  turned  away.  "  But  when  you  see  that 
sign — that  big  gold  tooth — don't  git  a  f aintin'  fit !  "  she 
called  after  him;  and  there  was  some  concern  mixed  with 
her  badinage. 

Henry,  with  grimness  increased  by  this  levity,  full  of 
the  weighty  matters  that  faced  him,  slouched  rapidly  out 
along  the  bluestone  flagging — another  evidence  of  Ethel's 
wifely  industry — and  hit  the  main  road.  The  day  was  at 
its  prime,  green  and  gold  all  over  the  hillside,  with  only 
here  and  there  the  scarlet  signal  of  a  sumach  or  wood- 


8o  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

bine  to  show  that  fall  was  at  hand.  Second-growth  pine, 
dogwood,  cedar,  oak,  and  hickory  made  a  tangle  on 
either  side  of  the  down-slanting  road,  and  straggled  back 
into  wastes  that  had  been  the  cultivated  fields  of  another 
generation :  fields  reclaimed  by  the  labors  of  a  Hercules 
from  rocks  and  forest,  now  allowed  to  return  to  wood- 
bearing  and  beauty,  because  better  ones  had  been  found 
elsewhere. 

He  jolted  downward,  winding  along  the  winding  road, 
knees  crooked  to  cushion  his  rickety  frame  as  much  as 
possible,  stumbling  whenever  his  feet  lighted  on  a  stone 
that  his  far-sighted  eyes  hadn't  seen.  Inside  his  precari 
ously  balanced  head,  his  cerebral  centers  were  alert  and 
active.  He  was  on  his  way  to  carry  out  the  plans  laid 
in  the  sleeplessness  of  the  preceding  night.  His  first  bit 
of  strategy,  having  to  do  with  the  mythical  sinner  over 
in  Columbia  County,  had  eventuated  precisely  according 
to  expectation.  He  knew  what  to  expect  in  one  corner, 
at  least,  if  Clotilde  insisted  on  revealing  the  plain  truth. 
As  behooved  him,  he  was  on  his  way  to  see  that  Truth 
kept  to  her  closed  carriage.  At  least  that  she  delay  her 
debut  for  a  few  days. 

He  passed  the  Brooks'  homestead,  a  huge,  white,  wide- 
verandahed  farmhouse  with  numerous  tidy  outbuildings, 
once  the  center  of  a  struggling  farm,  of  late  years  enjoy 
ing  greater  prosperity  as  a  summer  boarding  house.  He 
dawdled  along  after  he  had  entered  the  tree-overarched 
road  again;  he  had  plenty  of  time  to  catch  the  ten-thirty 
stage,  time  to  meander  and  to  think.  "  She  ain't  thought 
— she'll  come  around  when  I  tell  her  how  things  is,"  he 
told  himself :  "  yet  she  looked  'sif  she  was  the  sort  would 
git  what  she  went  after,  too." 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  81 

It  worried  him,  that  part,  and  yet  it  made  him  proud 
of  her,  also.  He  was  proud  of  Clotilde:  in  a  strange, 
dubious,  hesitating  way,  he  had  come  to  accept  the  fact 
that  she  was,  really,  his  daughter;  and  the  sort  of  a 
daughter,  too,  that  a  good-for-nawthin'  old  farmer  like 
himself  might  be  proud  of.  His  daughter — that  was 
queer — he  shook  his  head.  In  the  eternal  fitness  of 
things,  for  which  he  had  a  keen  sense,  he  knew  she 
couldn't  be  his  daughter — not  really — not  as  Isabel  and 
Esther  were.  She  was  rather  unclassified  in  her  relation 
to  him — and  yet,  somehow,  he  had  a  claim  on  her ;  enough 
of  a  claim  to  make  him  prouder  of  her,  say,  than  if  she 
had  been  his  boarder.  He  would  have  held  up  his  head 
and  spruced  up  his  body  a  bit  and  generally  displayed 
pride  before  the  Brooks,  if  he'd  had  a  boarder  like 
Clotilde;  he  recognized  her,  at  once,  as  superior  to  the 
general  run  of  Brooks'  boarders.  And  Clotilde,  all 
youth  and  bookish  language,  and  vibrant  girlish  beauty, 
was  even  nearer  to  him  than  a  boarder;  a  little  nearer, 
if  not  much;  and,  by  that  token,  he  felt  a  little  more 
pride,  more  need  of  sprucing  up,  than  if  she  had  been  his 
only  to  house  and  feed. 

It  was  all  very  strange,  full  of  tasty  subtleties,  of  more 
than  ordinary  richness  in  feelings  capable  of  escaping,  not 
only  through  his  language,  but  through  the  finer  meshes 
of  his  thought.  As  she  came  up  the  road  she  had  re 
minded  him,  just  for  a  moment,  of  her  mother.  And 
that  was  strange,  too,  how  fair  and  perfect  the  image 
of  her  young  mother  remained  in  his  mind,  despite  all 
the  droppings  of  deciduous  years,  the  heaped-up  detritus 
of  his  hard  life.  He  was  like  an  old  stone  quarry  in 
which  the  clearing  away  of  a  "  rubbage-heap  "  reveals 


82  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

something  rare  and  beautiful,  and  shameful,  too,  some 
thing  to  be  kept  hidden  from  all  but  the  eyes  of  the 
worker  who  left  it  there. 

How  well  he  had  hidden  that  strange,  wonderful, 
shameful  thing!  In  the  years  immediately  following, 
when  the  young  bucks  of  the  countryside  boasted  their 
conquests,  he  had  been  silent,  a  little  sneering,  remem 
bering  his  greater,  more  splendidly  wicked  adventure :  an 
adventure  too  important  to  boast  about,  even  if  a  sense 
of  fair  play  hadn't  played  a  great  part  in  keeping  him 
silent.  But  the  greatest  part  in  that  had  been  taken  by 
pure  shock.  For  weeks  following  that  October  night  he 
had  gone  about  like  a  man  miraculously  left  alive  after 
the  explosion  of  a  blast  at  his  very  feet,  full  of  a  vague 
surprise  at  the  ordinary  business  of  life,  slow  of  speech, 
sight,  and  hearing.  The  efforts  of  his  old  invalid  mother 
to  find  out  what  was  wrong  with  him  had  started  denials 
and  concealments  that  hardened  with  time.  His  sudden 
change,  his  harshness  in  insisting  that  nothing  was  wrong 
with  him,  that  he  be  left  alone,  had  helped  to  loosen  her 
slender  hold  on  life.  She  died  without  knowing.  He 
had  never  even  thought  of  telling  anyone  else  what  he 
had  refused  to  tell  her.  His  marriage  with  Ethel 
Whipple  had  been  a  commonplace,  half-jocular  affair 
between  boy  and  girl  who  had  grown  up  together;  by 
the  time,  some  fifteen  years  later,  that  real  intimacy 
had  grown  up  between  them,  other  matters  had  crowded 
his  boyish  wildness  out  of  mind. 

It  had  been  a  young  buck's  wildness :  that  tradition  he 
had  fastened  on  an  adventure  that  had  been  as  much  an 
over-suppressed,  overwrought  girl's  doing  as  his  own. 
He  had  been  wild,  wicked,  sowed  wild  oats,  and  he  had 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  83 

intelligence  enough  to  despise  that  sort  of  thing,  to  keep 
it  out  of  sight,  out  of  mind,  to  bury  and  stamp  the  earth 
down  over  it,  as  something  that  regrets  wouldn't  help, 
nor  keeping  above-ground,  neither.  It  had  lain  securely 
enough  under  its  old  "  rubbage-heap  "  until  Clotilde  ap 
peared  to  remind  him  that  it  was  there.  The  very  essence 
and  headiness  of  it,  stripped  of  its  cheap  tradition,  had 
surged  from  his  weak  heart  through  his  atrophied  veins 
as  Clotilde  recalled  it,  detail  by  detail,  glorying  in  it  as 
he  had  never  dared  to  glory.  Her  words  had  not  meant 
so  much  to  him :  indeed,  her  high-flown,  bookish  words 
had  fallen  for  the  most  part  on  unhearing  ears;  but  the 
rush  of  feeling,  the  quivering,  surging,  overwhelming 
emotions,  torrents  of  spring  and  high  fragrant  winds 
from  the  south,  all  the  intensity  of  love-magic  that  had 
inspired  her  while  she  talked,  that  had  gone  home  to  him, 
that  had  carried  away  the  withered  old  man  even  in  the 
vicarious  revelation,  even  as  the  actuality  had  carried 
away  the  green  youth.  For  a  little  while  he  had  lived 
both  a  revivified  and  a  communicated  passion. 

He  entered  the  village,  shaky  with  walking  downhill 
and  with  vivid  glimpses  into  his  own  past,  and  yet  a 
little  amused  and  contemptuous  of  his  shakiness,  too,  and 
headed  for  the  stage-owner's  big  purple  barn.  The  old 
surrey  stood  in  the  barnyard;  the  two  old  nags  were  still 
in  their  stalls.  He  nosed  about  the  barn,  looking  for 
Skeeter.  Skeeter  was  discovered  mending  harness  in  the 
doorway  of  an  adjacent  shed. 

Henry  sauntered  up  to  him,  more  dignified  for  city 
clothes  if  for  nothing  else.  "  'Lo,  you  Skeeter,"  he 
said. 

"  How'r,  Mr.  Hen  Hoot  ? "   returned  Skeeter,  with 


84  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  clever  mixture  of  respect  and  familiarity  that  made 
him  a  good  stage-driver.  "  Fine  day !  " 

Henry  asked :  "  Think  you  can  make  it's  fur's  West 
Beacon?" 

"Sure  thing!" 

"  Well,  I  might  go  'long — if  you  think  your  rig'll  last 
that  fur." 

"  I  guess  it'll  last,"  opined  Skeeter,  punching  holes 
with  some  glumness. 

"  When'r  you  goin'  to  get  that  new  motor-bus  you're 
always  talkin'  'bout?  " 

"  Oh,  I  guess  it'll  be  along  pre'  soon,"  said  Skeeter, 
more  glum  than  before. 

"  Yes;  but  when  you  get  to  be's  old's  I  am,  you'll  just 
as  leave  keep  drivin'  the  old  stage."  Henry  sat  down, 
finished  with  mere  pleasantries,  and  turned  astutely  to 
the  business  in  hand.  "  Not  much  traffic  now,  I  guess?  " 

"  Oh,  quite  a  little,"  objected  Skeeter,  mistaking  the 
nature  of  the  business.  When  traffic  got  light,  in  the  fall 
and  winter,  favored  natives  were  sometimes  hauled  at 
half-price. 

"  Mostly  goin'  out,  I  guess?"  Henry  recognized  the 
reason  for  defending  the  liveliness  of  traffic,  but  drove  on 
straight  to  the  heart  of  his  business,  slow  but  straight 
as  was  his  custom. 

"  Yes.     Mostly." 

"  But  one  or  two  still  comin'  in — not  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes — one  or  two." 

"  Women  artusses  mostly,  I  guess."  This  was  so  near 
the  heart  of  the  matter  that  great  casualness  accompanied 
it.  Skeeter  looked  up,  interested.  "  Yes — one  on  'em 
came  in  with  me  yestiddy."  Skeeter  blushed  faintly, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  85 

but  it  was  not  noticeable,  for  his  damask  cheeks  were 
habitually  the  color  of  ripe  peaches. 

"  Ah — ho-oh  ?  "  Henry  permitted  his  head  to  droop 
backward,  thus  allowing  his  lower  jaw  to  sag  in  his 
habitual  gesture  of  polite  surprise.  He  appeared  to 
ponder  this  revelation,  to  consider  its  possibilities. 
"  Well,  now,  Ethel  was  just  sayin'  she  wished  she  had 
'nother  wash  or  two — most  o'  the  summer  boarders  goin' 
away's  been  kinda  hard  on  her — she's  had  six  washin's 
all  summer,  now  she's  only  got  two.  Makes  it  kinda 
hard  on  her,  with  ev'ything  up  so  infernal  high  count  o' 
the  war."  He  pushed  his  old  green  felt  hat,  the  one 
discordant  note  in  his  otherwise  perfect  state  of  dressed- 
up-ness,  backward  and  solemnly  scratched  the  top  of  his 
head.  "  Maybe  I  might  drop  in  and  see  that  new  artuss 
— she  might  have  some  wash,  seein's  she's  been  travelin'. 
Maybe  she's  stayin'  at  the  Inn — or  one  o'  the  boardin' 
houses — the  Tannery  Brook,  likely?" 

He  had  arrived ;  in  a  second  he  would  have  quietly  and 
painlessly  extracted  Clotilde's  address. 

"  I  thought  she  went  up  to  your  place  yestiddy  after 
noon  ?  "  returned  Skeeter,  not  surprised  to  discover  trails 
of  duplicity. 

Henry  suppressed  any  sign  of  shock ;  he  acknowledged : 
"Well,  she  might  'uv;  I  wasn't  home  yestiddy  all  after 
noon.  I  thought  it  might  uv  been  someone  else.  Any 
way,  I  guess  Ethel  forgot  to  ask  her  about  the  wash;  so 
I  guess  I'll  jest  ja'nt  'long  down  to  the  Brook  House — " 

"  She  ain't  stayin'  at  the  Brook  House,"  said 
Skeeter,  pleasantly  rising  to  expectations.  "  Last 
evenin'  I  drove  her  from  the  Brookses'  down  to  Mr. 
Kling's.  She's  a  friend  o'  theirs,  I  guess." 


86  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Henry  thought  the  matter  over  for  some  minutes,  dis 
regarding  Skeeter's  obvious  readiness  to  hear  more 
about  the  particular  woman-artuss  they'd  been  discussing. 

"  It  don't  really  make  no  difference,"  he  decided,  for 
external  consumption ;  "  but  it  ain't  like  Ethel  to've  for 
got  'bout  that  wash." 

He  talked  no  more,  neither  while  waiting  for 
Skeeter  to  hitch  up,  nor  on  the  hour's  drive  to  West 
Beacon.  The  trial  of  nerve  and  courage  that  lay  before 
him,  the  white-uniformed  foe  equipped  with  poison  gas, 
flaming  liquids,  and  diverse  dangerous  engines,  waiting 
behind  the  sign  of  the  big  gold  tooth,  occupied  his 
thoughts,  even  to  the  exclusion  of  Clotilde. 

He  had  really  resolved  to  have  his  snags  removed; 
during  his  minute  dissection  of  his  recent  experiences, 
in  the  course  of  the  previous  night,  it  had  not  escaped 
him  that  Clotilde,  that  very  aristocratic  and  delicate 
young  lady,  who  was  somewhat  nearer  to  him  than  a 
boarder,  might  have  been  shocked  by  the  condition  of 
his  teeth.  He  knew  well  enough  that  they  were  offensive 
to  anyone  who  came  very  near  him ;  Ethel  and  his  daugh 
ters  kept  him  reminded  of  that.  His  thought  of  Clotilde, 
delicate-handed,  fragrantly  clean  Clotilde,  bending  over 
his  gaping  mouth,  as  Ethel  had  informed  him  "  that 
woman "  had  had  the  temerity  to  do,  filled  him  with 
shame  and  regret  for  his  unsightly,  malodorous  snags, 
and  he  was  determined  to  have  them  out,  cost  what  it 
might  in  horror,  torture,  and  hard  cash.  By  way  of  an 
additional  "  sprucing  up,"  he  had  decided  to  buy  himself 
a  new  hat.  Incidentally,  he  intended  to  buy  some  little 
thing  for  Ethel,  as  was  a  mutual  custom,  whenever  they 
went  to  Kingston  either  singly  or  together.  Incidentally 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  87 

No.  2,  he  was  considering  the  advisability  of  buying 
something  of  the  same  nature  for  Clotilde.  He  had 
determined  to  see  her  before  that  day's  sun  was  set.  It 
might  propitiate  her  if  he  could  begin  the  interview  by 
handing  her  some  small  gift. 

He  became  so  nervous  during  the  half-hour  on  the 
train  that  he  bought  and  consumed  a  large  beer  in  a 
saloon  across  the  street  from  the  Kingston  station.  It 
seemed  to  help  in  facing  the  prospective  sign  of  the  gold 
tooth.  Coming  out,  he  debated  taking  a  car  or  walking 
the  half-mile  from  the  station  to  the  dentist's  office.  If 
he  took  a  car,  he'd  have  it  over  sooner;  on  the  other 
hand,  there  was  a  rank  waste  of  five  good  cents.  Neither 
of  these  two  considered  reasons,  but  a  large,  instinctive 
wariness  about  rushing  into  danger,  decided  his  course. 
He  set  out  to  walk,  dawdling  along,  admonishing  his 
nerve,  scowling  frightfully  at  passersby,  scowling  into 
show-windows. 

In  the  course  of  the  first  three  blocks  he  noticed  a 
window ful  of  men's  hats,  and  he  stepped  back  to  the 
curb  to  inspect  them.  He  could  look  at  men's  hats,  even 
though  he  had  decided  that  it  was  snags  first,  that  he 
would  not  purchase  one  before  the  dangers  of  dentistry 
had  been  everlastingly  removed  from  the  horizon.  There 
was  one,  a  black  felt  with  a  narrow  brim,  price  $1.50, 
that  he  rather  hankered  after;  he  determined  to  keep  it 
in  mind  in  case  he  saw  nothing  better  further  up  town, 
and  dawdled  on. 

A  window-display  of  ladies'  notions,  belts,  hats,  gloves, 
and  lace  collars,  set  a  snare  for  him  before  he  had  gone 
five  blocks  further.  He  stepped  back,  scowling  because 
of  the  necessary  interruption,  to  inspect  this  display  with 


88  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

a  view  toward  remembrances  for  Ethel — and,  perhaps, 
for  Clotilde. 

In  one  corner  of  the  display  he  recognized  several 
articles  that,  as  he  had  learned  from  Ethel,  were 
jabots,  and  dear  to  the  feminine  heart.  "  Not  ex 
pensive,  either,"  he  informed  himself,  making  out,  by 
stepping  to  the  outer  edge  of  the  sidewalk  and  cran 
ing  his  neck  backward,  that  the  figure  on  the  card 
was  twenty-five  and  not  thirty-five,  as  he  had  at  first 
suspected. 

He  stood  and  scowled  at  the  jabots,  full  of  weighty 
considerations.  In  case  he  took  a  car  back  to  the  station, 
it  would  hardly  pay  him  to  get  off  there  just  to  buy  two 
jabots,  thus  realizing  not  more  than  half  the  value  of  his 
car-fare.  He  might  have  to  take  a  car  back,  too;  he 
might  be  in  no  condition  to  walk,  after  that  dentist  had 
finished  with  him. 

In  spite  of  the  eleven-o'clock  sunshine  pouring  down 
on  his  back,  he  shuddered.  That  dentist — that  cool,  con 
tained,  hypocritically  smiling  demon  wielding  instruments 
of  torture,  surrounded  by  a  torture-chamberful  of  mys 
terious  horrors  1  Once  he  had  had  a  snag  removed — only 
once.  It  had  gone  too  long,  it  was  little  more  than 
massy  roots :  cutting,  undermining,  digging,  and  twisting 
had  been  necessary.  There  was  neither  cocaine  nor  gas 
in  those  days — not  that  the  idea  of  these  modern  poisons 
appealed  to  him  except  as  additional  horrors.  Yes,  he 
would  undoubtedly  have  to  go  back  in  a  car.  He  ought 
to  get  both  the  jabots  and  the  hat,  for  it  was  certain  that 
he  wouldn't  be  competent  afterwards.  He  went  in  and 
pallidly  purchased  two  jabots,  one  with  red  tassels,  the 
other  with  tan;  then  he  returned  down  the  street  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  89 

bought  the  black  hat.  Even  in  its  paper  bag,  it  sug 
gested  an  imminent  funeral. 

"  Now  I  got  to  face  the  music!  "  he  told  himself,  stag 
gering  up  the  street,  faint  with  horrific  anticipations  and 
the  large,  unaccustomed  beer.  "  I  got  to  do  it — they's 
nothin'  else  I  got  to  do !  " 

At  least  there  was  nothing  else  he'd  got  to  do,  his 
earnestly  searching  mind  announced,  until  he  got  back 
to  Woodbridge. 

It  came  over  him,  with  an  interesting  shock,  that  his 
bout  with  the  dentist  might  leave  him  so  unstrung  that 
he  couldn't  do  what  he  had  to  do  back  there,  later  in 
the  afternoon.  He  might  be  laid  up  for  several  days. 

There  was,  on  second  thought,  hardly  any  doubt  about 
it.  If  one  little  tooth,  one  measly  little  snag,  removed 
twenty  years  ago,  when  he  was  in  his  prime,  had  nearly 
done  for  him — what  would  six  or  seven  huge  snags  do, 
cut,  torn,  twisted,  blasted  from  their  foundations,  one 
after  another,  to  the  accompaniment  of  jabs  of  a  needle, 
like  a  wasp's  stinger,  only  more  poisonous  and  no  good 
to  stop  pain  anyway — at  least  he  had  this  on  the  authority 
of  his  Uncle  Aleck,  who  had  had  experience,  and  was 
a  reliable  man : — well,  what  would  all  this  do  to  him 
now  that  he  was  old,  feeble,  had  an  awful  stummick, 
and  wasn't  good  for  nawthin',  anyway?  If  it  didn't 
kill  him,  he  wouldn't  be  able  to  get  out  of  bed  for  a  week, 
at  least. 

It  wasn't  that  he  minded  so  much  the  danger  to  his 
life,  of  course,  but,  in  the  meantime,  Clotilde  might  come 
again — might  tell  Ethel,  while  he  lay  helpless,  hovering 
between  life  and  death;  the  amazing  young  woman 
thinking,  in  a  way  that  passed  his  understanding,  that 


90  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Ethel  would  be  pleased,  delighted,  as  everybody  ought 
to  be.  Clotilde  had  a  way  about  her,  a  way  suggesting 
that  she  was  accustomed  to  get  what  she  went  after. 
That  very  afternoon,  before  he  returned,  Clotilde  might 
make  another  effort  to  see  him,  to  edify  Ethel  with  the 
naked  truth — 

He  yanked  out  his  turnip-shaped  watch:  he  had  been 
in  town  twenty- five  minutes:  he  would  have  just  time  to 
get  back  to  the  station  and  catch  the  up-train,  for  which 
Skeeter  waited — if  he  hurried.  He  hurried.  He 
ambled,  he  turkey-trotted,  he  skeedaddled  swiftly  for 
the  station,  caught  the  train  just  as  it  was  pulling  out, 
and  found  a  seat  in  the  smoker. 

In  spite  of  his  recent  scare  about  Clotilde,  he  lit  his 
old  pipe  with  more  relish,  he  felt  better  all  over,  than 
he  had  for  months.  His  old  snags — it  seemed  downright 
friendly  of  them  to  be  there,  in  their  accustomed  snaggi- 
ness,  explorable  with  his  tongue,  as  of  old.  What  a  fool 
he  had  been  to  think  of  a  small  matter  like  having  them 
removed  when  dangers  like  Clotilde's  careless  handling 
of  the  truth  were  toward!  Ten  to  one,  they  weren't 
responsible  for  his  awful  stummick,  anyway.  When  he 
reflected  that  it  was  Clotilde  who  had  almost  been  respon 
sible  for  his  loss  of  those  harmless,  friendly,  and  explor 
able,  if  somewhat  snaggy,  companions  of  his  declining 
years,  he  was  downright  sorry  that  he  had  spent  twenty- 
five  cents  on  a  gift  for  her.  She  would  have  to  learn, 
he  told  himself  grimly,  that  he  had  some  rights  she  was 
bound  to  respect. 

Skeeter,  putting  a  cheerful  face  on  a  disheartening 
scarcity  of  passengers  for  Woodbridge,  was  glad  to  see 
him.  "  Yes,  sir,  Mr.  Hooghtyling — right  over  here  for 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  91 

Woodbridge !  "  he  announced  in  his  professional  manner, 
and  accompanied  his  sole  fare  over  to  the  rickety  surrey. 

Both  as  a  matter  of  policy,  and  because  of  a  general 
feeling  of  renewed  friendliness  for  the  universe,  Henry 
warmed  up  to  Skeeter  on  the  homeward  road. 

"  I'll  bet  you'll  get  more  fun  out  o'  drivin'  that  new 
motor-bus  than  you  do  out  o'  steerin'  these  here  candi 
dates  for  the  glue  fact'ry — eh,  boy?  "  he  opined  brightly. 

"  I  dunno's  I'll  wait  much  longer — guess  I'll  go  into  a 
trainin'  camp,"  said  Skeeter,  dourly  contemplating  the 
sway-backs  of  his  candidates. 

In  view  of  the  number  of  young  men  from  Wood- 
bridge  already  in  training  camps,  there  was  nothing 
startling  in  this.  Henry  proceeded  to  business.  "  Have 
a  good  deal  o'  time  on  your  hands  between  this  here  train 
and  the  one  you  meet  at  five  o'clock,  don't  you  ?  " 

"Not  a  whole  lot,"  hedged  Skeeter;  "but  if  they 
was  anything  I  could  do  for  you — " 

"  Well,  now,  that's  kind  of  you  to  offer  right  up,  like 
that,"  Henry  complimented  him. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right—" 

Henry  decreed :  "  I've  knowed  you  a  long  time, 
Skeeter,  and  I've  knowed  your  father  afore  you,  and 
you're  all  right.  Trouble'th  lots  o'  these  young  fellers 
round  here  is  they  ain't  got  no  manners,  nor  decent 
respect.  I've  watched  you,  I'm  some  judge  o'  boys,  and 
when  I  tell  you  you'll  come  along  all  right,  I  mean  it — 
that's  all." 

Skeeter  preserved  a  diffident,  and  discreet,  silence; 
the  introduction  presaged  a  considerable  request. 

"  Referrin'  to  what  you  was  mentionin'  a  minute  ago, 
yes,  they  is  somethin'  you  can  do  for  me,  Skeeter," 


92  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Henry  continued,  with  deep  feeling.  "  I  wouldn't  ask 
you  if  I  didn't  know  you  to  be  trustworthy — " 

"If  I  have  the  time,  Mr.  Hooghtyling;  you  know 
they's  a  lot  to  be  done  around  the  barns  between  trains; 
and  when  a  rig's  in  such  bad  shape  as  this  old  shebang — " 
began  Skeeter,  getting  an  anchor  planted  to  windward. 

Henry  interrupted :  "  'Twon't  take  you  twenty  minutes, 
boy — leastwise,  not  more'n  twenty.  'Tain't  the  time — 
it's  the  responsibility.  Now,  what  I  want  you  to  do,  and 
I'm  more'n  willin'  to  pay  you  well  for  doin'  it,  too — is,  I 
want  you  to  go  up  to  the  Klings'." 

He  stopped,  ponderously  considering. 

"Yes,  sir?"  Skeeter  encouraged  him.  Skeeter 
showed  every  sign  of  having  forgotten  his  anchor  to 
windward,  of  being  anxious  to  fly  with  the  wind,  wither 
soever  it  listed. 

"  And  ask  for  Miss  Clotilde  Westerhook." 

Another  silence.  Skeeter  ventured,  almost  worship- 
fully:  "  It's  Westbrook — if  you'll  excuse  me,  Mr.  Hoogh 
tyling — ain't  it?" 

"  How'd  you  know?"  demanded  Henry,  boring  into 
Skeeter's  ingenuous  Irish  countenance  with  two-eyefuls 
of  rheumy  Dutch  phlegm. 

"  I — why — I  just  happened  to  see  the  name  on  her 
suitcase — when  I  brought  her  out  yestiddy,  you  know," 
explained  Skeeter,  terribly  perturbed.  "  It  was  on 
one  o'  them  little  leather  tags,  with  a  card  into  it — you 
know — like  a  good  many  o'  the  artusses  has." 

"  Seems  to  me  you  been  lookin'  pretty  close — pretty 
close,"  returned  Henry,  and  retired  into  a  grimness  of 
silence  that  might  have  been  construed  as  paternal. 
"  Gid-ap !  "  growled  Skeeter  huskily  at  the  two  ancient 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  93 

and  ambling  nags.  He  was  fiery-red  as  to  both  cheeks, 
disorganized  completely  as  to  eyes  and  mouth. 

"  Take  it  from  me,  who's  lived  a  lot  longer  than  you, 
boy,  and  maybe  seen  more — yes,  maybe  seen  a  leetle  bit 
more,"  said  Henry,  "  and  don't  let  your  desires  go  stray- 
in'  in  that  direction,  Skeeter.  Stick  to  the  village  girls 
and  let  the  artusses  alone."  There  was  a  gentleness  in 
his  voice,  a  surety  and  an  ominousness,  that  held  the 
youth  spellbound,  amazed,  by  the  old  man's  penetration. 

Henry,  without  even  looking  at  him,  understood.  In 
a  way  perhaps  related  to  his  ability  to  locate  under 
ground  springs,  and  to  foretell  a  storm  two  days  ahead 
of  time,  rather  through  some  direct  and  subtle  channel 
than  through  anything  Skeeter  had  said  or  done,  he 
had  penetrated  to  Skeeter's  emotions.  His  ability  to 
locate  well-sites  and  to  foretell  storms  was  not  infallible; 
but  his  mistakes  were  more  than  counterbalanced  by  his 
astonishing  successes;  and,  in  Skeeter's  case,  he  knew 
that  he  had  surmised  true. 

"  No,  sir,  it  don't  pay  for  plain  folks  like  you  and 
me,  Skeeter,  to  get  mixed  up  with  artusses,  except 
in  the  common  run  o'  business  and  a  noddin'  acquaint 
ance,"  he  continued  gravely.  "  Not  but  what  Miss  West- 
brook  don't  appear  to  be  a  fine  girl.  But  the  finer  they 
are,  the  more  a  fellow  had  ought  to  watch  out.  Your 
own  father'd  tell  you  the  same  if  he  was  alive;  and  you'd 
listen  to  him  respectful  and  quiet,  just  like  you're  listenin' 
to  me — because  you  got  some  nat'ral  respect  for  age  and 
experience — and  then  go  and  do  just  as  you've  a  mind 
to,"  finished  Henry,  with  swift  tartness.  "  Well — go 
ahead!  Folks  got  to  pay  for  their  schoolin'  in  this 
world." 


94  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Skeeter  laughed  foolishly,  admiringly.  Henry  pro 
ceeded  :  "  Young  men  got  to  learn,  and  they  most 
gin'ly  pay  for  their  schoolin',  too.  Free  advice  don't 
git  'em  nowhere.  I  might  as  well  a-kep'  quiet  for  all 
the  good  it'll  do."  He  paused;  Skeeter's  silence  indi 
cated  assent;  he  continued:  "Now,  as  I  was  sayin',  I 
want  you  to  go  up  to  the  Klings'." 

"  Yes,  sir !  "  Skeeter  was  made  vocal  by  that,  at  any 
rate. 

"  And  ask  for  Miss  Clotilde  Westbrook." 

"Yes,  sir!" 

"  And  when  you  git  her  alone — kinda  bow  her  out  onto 
the  porch,  or  something,  lookin'  kinda  important,  secret, 
you  know — for  it  had  ought  to  be  alone,  Skeeter." 

"Yes,  sir!" 

"  And  when  you  get  her  alone,  just  say :  '  Mr.  Hoogh- 
tyling  sent  me  to  tell  you  he  particular  wants  to  see  you 
before  you  decide  definite  about  anything.'  Just  say 
that." 

"Yes,  sir!" 

"  You  needn't  mention  the  wash,  though  that's  what 
I  refer  to.  Just  say  what  I  told  you,  then  say : '  In  order 
to  save  you  climbin'  that  old  hill  again,  Mr.  Hooghty- 
ling  '11  be  waitin'  round  the  corner  o'  the  road  by  the 
Brookses'  lower  pasture,  'bout  half  a  mile  from  the 
village,  any  time  from  one  to  four  o'clock.  He  hopes 
you'll  be  reasonable,  and  not  start  nawthin'  till  you  see 
him.'  Now,  then,  can  you  remember  all  that?  Because 
they  ain't  a  word  of  it  but  what's  important!  " 

"Yes,  sir!" 

"  Well,  let's  hear  you  say  it  over." 

Skeeter  repeated  it  almost  word  for  word.     Henry 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  95 

was  surprised  and  gratified;  he  shrewdly  suspected  the 
cause  of  Skeeter's  sharpened  memory.  '  That's  good," 
he  said ;  "  I  guess  the  person  you're  goin'  to  say  it 
to's  had  something  to  do  with  how  much  notice  you've 
took  of  it.  Maybe,  for  your  own  sake,  I'd  ought  to  send 
somebody  else. — You  want  to  'member  specially  those 
two  words — reasonable,  and  not  to  start  nawthin'. 
Now — "  Henry  made  a  great  show  of  putting  his  hand 
in  his  pocket.  "  How  much  do  I  owe  you  for  that 
little  errant?" 

"  Nothin'  at  all,  Mr.  Hooghtyling — glad  to  do  it  to 
oblige  a  customer !  "  said  Skeeter.  "  '  Reasonable  '  and 
'not  to  start  nawthin'!'  Well,  from  all  I  saw  of 
her,  Mr.  Hooghtyling,  she  looked  reasonable.  I  bet  you 
get  that  wash,  all  right." 

"  Um— ye-es,"  admitted  Henry.  "  Maybe  I'll  get  that 
wash,  and  maybe  she  looked  reasonable.  But  you  can't 
always  tell,  Skeeter,  from  the  looks  of  a  frog,  how  fur 
it'll  jump." 

Skeeter  agreed,  with  an  exhilarated  chuckle,  that 
you  couldn't.  It  seemed  wildly  incongruous  to  compare 
Clotilda  to  a  frog.  Clotilde — stars — wild  roses — 

"  It's  just  simply  downright  dead  impossible !  "  as 
severated  Henry  Hooghtyling,  grim  as  a  country  judge. 
And  yet,  at  bottom,  he  wasn't  so  grim  because  of  that. 
Wil  fulness,  sudden  headstrong  whims  and  fancies — a 
girl's  will,  even  more  than  a  boy's,  it  may  be,  is  the  wind's 
will.  He  thought  of  her  mother,  of  old,  far-off,  unhappy, 
happy,  and  heart-catching  things. 

The  stage  was  uninterestingly  empty  to  such  artusses 
and  village  folk  as  happened  to  notice  it  as  it  rattled 
precariously  up  toward  the  Inn;  a  withered  old  farmer, 


96  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

in  ill-fitting  black  "  city "  clothes,  bowed  moodily  for 
ward,  corded  brown  hands  on  his  skinny  knees,  sat  beside 
the  semi-comatose,  bowed,  vacant-eyed  country  youth 
who  held  the  lines.  Stolid,  humble,  casual  to  innocuous- 
ness  were  horses,  rig,  driver,  and  sole  passenger ;  and  yet 
never  argosy  made  port  more  richly  laden  with  the  gold 
of  romance,  the  pale  yellow  gold  of  old  memories  and  the 
bright  red  gleaming  gold  of  young  hopes,  with  spices 
from  Araby,  and  costly  bales. 


CHAPTER  VI 

•! 

TRUTH,  AFTER  MUCH  KNOCKING  ABOUT,  IS  WEL 
COMED  BY  AN  ULTRA-MODERN  YOUNG  MAN— 
ALTHOUGH  NOT,  PERHAPS,  FOR  HER  OWN  UNA 
DULTERATED  SAKE 

WHEN  Skeeter  knocked  at  the  front  door  of  the 
Klings'  bungalow,  at  one-thirty  that  afternoon,  after 
delaying  in  order  to  give  Clotilde  time  for  luncheon  as 
well  as  to  give  himself  time  for  a  hardly  necessary  shave 
and  a  general  "  dolling  up  "  that  might  have  been  con 
sidered  more  necessary,  Clotilde  didn't  hear  him. 

At  the  time  of  his  knock  she  was  standing  in  the 
Klings'  living-room,  alone  except  for  the  immediate 
proximity  of  Mr.  Carey  Beemis.  At  the  precise  instant 
when  Skeeter's  first  palpitating  knock  came  on  the 
upper  half  of  the  big  divided  Dutch  door,  not  ten  feet 
from  her  ear,  Clotilde  was  saying :  "  When  I  admitted 
that  I  had  no  moral  objections  to  your  making  love  to 
me,  I  meant  to  infer  that  I  might  have  other  objections 
quite  as  valid.  Please  take  your  arm  away." 

"  Paradise  Lost  \  "  murmured  Mr.  Beemis,  half-way 
obeying,  looking  so  brightly,  boyishly,  drolly  forlorn  that 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for  any  woman  with  a 
trace  of  the  mother-instinct  to  be  too  hard  on  him. 

Clotilde  protested :  "  If  only  you  weren't  so  stupid 
about  some  things — you're  just  like  all  the  old  G.  V. 
crowd — it's  sex,  sex,  sex!  After  all  I've  told  you,  after 

97 


98  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

you've  shown  such  fine  sympathy  and  understanding — I 
should  have  thought  you'd  understand  that,  sexually,  I'm 
a  clam,  now,  and  expect  to  be  till  things  settle  down." 

Nevertheless,  her  cheeks  were  flushed  a  little,  her  eyes 
soft  and  dewy,  and  shining  like  dark  agates  in  the  half- 
light  of  the  dark-walled,  blue-curtained  living-room.  No 
tea-rose  could  have  displayed  more  alluring  nuances  of 
shade  and  texture  than  her  face.  With  her  hair  coiled 
carelessly,  old-fashionedly,  on  the  top  of  her  head,  with 
dark  ringlets  brushing  the  old  ivory  and  rose  pink  of 
her  cheeks,  the  milky  whiteness  of  her  neck,  with  all  her 
slim  young  perfection  extolled  by  her  princess  morn 
ing  gown  of  Chinese-blue  silk  crepe — What  a  flower  for 
any  man's  fingers  she  was !  As  with  flowers,  as  with  the 
lady-moth,  her  time  of  full  perfection  had  come;  and  no 
man  with  blood  in  his  veins  could  have  looked  at  her 
unmoved,  however  much  any  thoughtful  man  might 
have  considered  proprieties  before  obeying  unavoidable 
impulses. 

Mr.  Carey  Beemis,  being  a  professional  despiser  of 
proprieties,  bent  suddenly  forward  and  kissed  her  on  the 
nearest  cheek. 

Her  right  hand  flew  upward  to  strike,  to  push  him 
away.  He  caught  the  hand,  with  considerable  skill,  be 
fore  it  could  do  any  damage. 

"  Oh,  you  cheap — disgusting — "  She  struggled  to 
free  her  hand,  she  was  radiantly  furious.  With  im 
mediate  wisdom  in  such  matters,  he  released  her  hand 
at  once,  and  stood  humbly  adoring  her.  "  I  ought  to 
have  let  you — slap  me,"  he  mourned,  dulcet  as  a  nightin 
gale  plucked  by  the  thorn  of  a  wayward  rose.  "  I  will, 
if  you  want  to — I  suppose  I  deserve  it.  There — "  He 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  99 

turned  his  perfectly  shaven,  toilet-watered,  and  powdered 
cheek  toward  her. 

She  accepted  the  offer  without  a  second's  hesitation, 
with  vigor,  vim,  and  a  free-armed  sweep  surprising  in  a 
young  lady  of  such  refined  appearance.  Her  cupped 
hand  shouted  "  Plop !  ",  a  joyously  abandoned  "  Plop !  " 
as  its  considerable  momentum  was  arrested  by  Mr. 
Beemis'  outstretched  face. 

His  arms  jerked  upward,  his  mouth  and  eyes  flew  wide 
open,  as  if  he  had  been  a  jumping-jack,  with  every 
member  responsive  to  a  single  string.  "  Great — guns !  " 
he  gasped,  backing  out  of  range,  completely  out  of 
character,  but  preserving  a  laudable  self-possession  that 
enabled  him  to  see  some  humor  in  the  situation.  "  Say, 
that  was  a  good  one !  "  He  got  out  a  handkerchief, 
bordered  in  the  same  delicate  shade  of  tan  that  appeared 
in  his  necktie,  and  mopped  the  eye  nearest  the  spot  that, 
in  conjunction  with  Clotilde's  hand,  had  produced  the 
"Plop!" 

"  Say,  you  know,"  he  confided  to  her,  grinning,  show 
ing  a  lively  impersonal  interest — it  was  one  of  his  most 
engaging  characteristics  that  he  could  be  so  purely  im 
personal  about  very  personal,  even  painfully  personal 
matters :  "  I  suppose  I've  offered  my  damask  cheek  like 
that,  under  precisely  similar  circumstances,  to  at  least 
fifty  ladies  in  the  course  of  my  scant  twelve  years  of 
philandering — and  you're  the  first  that  ever  had  the  good 
sense  to  take  me  up !  "  His  large,  intelligent  gray  eyes 
beamed  self-forgetful  appreciation  of  her;  his  assaulted 
cheek  had  turned  the  color  of  a  poinsettia,  with  brilliant 
rays,  suggestive  of  the  flared  petals  of  a  poinsettia,  ex 
tending  outward  from  the  central  eruption,  but  he  dis- 


ioo  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

regarded  all  that.  "  Just  the  same,  Clotilde,  dear — 
pardon  me,  I  mean  my  dear  Miss  Westbrook — pardon 
me  again,  Miss  Hooghtyling — just  the  same,  I  fear 
you've  spoiled  one  of  my  most  effective  parlor  tricks.  I 
don't  suppose  I  shall  ever  be  able  to  pull  that  stuff  again 
— at  least  not  with  the  same  abandon — and  it  was  the 
abandon  that  always  put  it  over.  Another  of  my  youth 
ful  illusions  gone  to  the  scrap-heap!  Well — such  is 
life!" 

He  sat  down  opposite  her,  calm,  ratiocinative,  quietly 
dignified  and  immaculate  from  soul  and  emotions  to  gray 
Scotch  tweeds,  high-collared  white  flannel  shirt,  and  tan 
necktie.  Quietly  he  crossed  one  gray-green  stockinged 
calf  over  the  other,  with  a  delicate  thumb  and  forefinger 
he  loosened  his  knickerbockers  over  each  shapely  knee,  so 
signifying  that  he  was  aware  of  Clotilde's  exasperated 
scrutiny,  and  invited  it.  Neither  inside  nor  out,  his 
chirkily  smiling  young  face  announced,  was  he  anything 
but  such  a  young  man  as  might  be  a  fit  object  for  a 
lady's  approbation. 

Both  in  his  frankness,  his  outspoken  interest  in  the 
intellectual  side  of  matters  naturally  interesting  to  a 
young,  under-married  male,  in  short  in  his  devotion  to 
Truth,  and  in  many  other  details,  he  was  an  intensely 
Modern  young  man.  The  Modern  young  woman  had 
evoked  him.  He  was  nature's  immediate  response  to  an 
innovation.  If,  in  all  details,  he  was  not  admirable,  he 
had  the  well-grounded  excuse,  discovered  by  Francis 
Bacon,  that  nature's  immediate  responses  to  innovations 
are  often  mistakes,  "  misshapen  and  ugly  as  the  young 
of  animals." 

And  yet  there  was  certainly  nothing  ugly  nor  mis- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  101 

shapen  in  so  much  of  his  person  as  was  exposed  to 
the  common  gaze.  His  forehead  was  high,  square, 
shapely,  crowned  with  wavy  dark  hair  brushed  straight 
back  in  the  European  fashion.  His  nose,  his  mouth,  his 
chin,  might  have  been  drawn  by  any  of  the  most  popular 
illustrators  of  young  American  heroes  as  expounded  by 
magazine  fiction.  His  chin  was  especially  noticeable, 
long,  square,  delicately  modeled,  such  a  slightly  exagger 
ated  chin  as  is  the  glory  of  young  gentlemen  in  all-star 
fiction  numbers,  and  suggests  to  the  initiated  rather  more 
weakness  of  moral  fiber  than  would  be  suggested  by  no 
chin  at  all. 

His  eyes  somewhat  redeemed  him  from  being  a  purely 
stereotyped  personification  of  young-manly  virtue  as 
popularly  made  manifest  in  illustrational  art.  They 
were  large,  rather  prominent  in  spite  of  the  excellent 
depth  of  brow  above  them,  bold,  roving,  temeritous, 
always  holding  a  gleam  of  ironical  dare-deviltry  in  their 
dark  gray  depths — a  gleam  that  Edna  Kling  had  de 
scribed  as  suggesting  that  he  was  always  on  his  way  to 
a  party.  Youth  was  even  more  a  continuous  Mardi  Gras 
to  him  than  to  most  young  persons  of  his  type  and  social 
station;  particularly  he  reveled  in  Modern  Truth,  espe 
cially  those  elements  expounded  by  Max  Stirner,  Freud, 
Nietzsche,  and  other  Germans,  and  in  putting  them  into 
practice.  In  his  make-up  there  was  more  than  a  little 
of  that  physique  of  an  athlete  in  combination  with  the 
conscience  of  a  tiger  which  Goethe,  Nietzsche,  and  others 
have  recommended  as  the  basic  ingredient  of  a  man  fitted 
to  get  the  most  out  of  life. 

Greenwich  Village,  the  Washington  Square  section  of 
New  York  City,  where  Modernistic  young  women  fore- 


102  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

gathered  to  learn  of  Modernism,  had  nurtured  his  youth 
and  helped  to  make  him  what  he  was.  In  that  far- 
advanced,  rather  riotous  and  always  revelsome  atmos 
phere,  he  had  lived  and  revelled,  writing  a  little  for  radical 
magazines,  getting  on  very  nicely,  thanks  to  a  consider 
able  inherited  income  and  an  eye  for  naked  Truth.  He 
preached  Ultra-Modernism  in  the  cafes  and  restaurants, 
and  practised  the  most  personally  enjoyable  of  its  tenets 
in  the  flats,  clubs,  and  hotels  thereabouts.  The  coming 
of  the  war,  especially  its  spread  to  America,  had  been  a 
shock  to  him,  as  to  many  of  his  co-workers,  because  it 
removed  public  attention  from  the  reforms  which  he 
gained  a  pleasant  sense  of  importance  by  preaching,  no 
less  than  much  pleasure  and  profit  by  practising.  The 
war  was  an  intrusion. 

With  most  of  the  other  Radicals,  he  denied  the  war's 
importance.  It  was  a  nasty  brawl,  without  deep  basic 
ideas;  and  its  greatest  danger  was  that  it  would  distract 
attention  from  the  Radical  reforms  which  he  and  his 
brothers  and  sisters,  whether  in  New  York,  Chicago,  or 
San  Francisco,  were  inaugurating.  He  wrote  articles 
with  such  titles  as  "  This  Most  Uninteresting  War,"  and 
joined  such  publications  as  "  The  Masses,"  "  The  Seven 
Arts,"  "Mother  Earth,"  and  "Bull,"  in  belittling  the 
archaic  brutality  that,  starting  in  an  obscure  corner  of 
Europe,  threatened  to  take  even  America's  attention 
away  from  the  propaganda  of  Truth  and  Freedom — of 
Truth  and  Freedom  in  sex  relations,  in  work,  in  speech, 
in  clothes,  in  apartment  dwellings,  in  schools,  in  churches, 
in  industrial  relations,  in  everything.  They  were  too 
much  excited  about  their  threatened  estate  to  admit,  for 
a  moment,  that  he  who  saveth  his  Truth  and  Freedom 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  103 

might  lose  them,  or  that  he  who  loseth  might  find. 
When,  in  spite  of  the  war,  as  they  argued,  woman  suf 
frage  was  granted  in  New  York  State,  they  were  briefly 
exhilarated,  and  lastingly  cast  down;  for  so  many  faint 
hearts  considered  votes-for-women  an  end  in  itself,  as  if 
it  had  been  more  than  the  first  step  toward  true  Freedom 
for  women — and  for  Radical  men. 

As  the  war  showed  a  distressing  tendency  to  spread  in 
spite  of  their  vocal  objections,  Modernistic  Pacifism  fell 
roughly  into  talkative  and  silent  divisions.  The  silent 
group,  to  which  Clotilde  belonged,  turned  their  backs  on 
the  war,  and  gave  the  world  up  to  it,  the  flesh,  and  the 
Devil.  The  talkative  group,  of  bolder,  more  neurotic,  or 
more  outraged  spirits,  turned  their  attention  to  fighting 
America's  participation  on  the  ground  that  the  Germans 
were  no  worse  than  the  Allies.  This  was  Mr.  Beemis' 
faction. 

Its  members  were  accustomed  to  announce,  with  great 
meaning,  that  they  weren't  so  sure  that  the  Kaiser  was 
altogether  responsible,  and  rest  darkly  important,  as  if 
it  made  a  large  amount  of  present  difference  whether  the 
Kaiser,  Edward  Gray,  or  the  Akound  of  Swat  started 
the  German  war-machine  to  making  German  sausage  of 
as  many  neutral  and  possibly  inimical  peoples  as  it  seemed 
capable  of  handling  at  one  time.  They  could  prove,  not 
only  that  Wilson  had  contradicted  himself,  but  that 
Charles  Schwab  had  plotted  with  Kitchener,  and  that 
K.  of  K.  had  shot  down  a  stenographer  who  overheard 
the  conversation — surely  an  offset  to  the  murder  of  Edith 
Cavell.  They  classed  all  upholding  of  the  Allies  with 
the  remarkable  ex-cathedra  sanctification  of  Germany's 
morals  an4  motives,  given  out  by  Professors  Haeckel, 


104  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Eucken,  and  other  inspired  leaders  of  German  thought; 
and  they  laughed  at  the  notion  that  long  deprivation  of 
Truth  and  Freedom,  together  with  much  feeding  on  the 
paternal  pap  of  Verbotens  and  doctored  news  and  doc 
tored  history  and  militaristic  education  dispensed  from 
God  by  a  mediaeval  Kaiser  and  Junkerdom — that  stuffing 
with  all  of  Radicalism's  most  hated  poisons,  and  depriva 
tion  of  most  of  Radicalism's  healing  floods — might  have 
made  the  Germans  a  mentally  inferior  and  beastly  dan 
gerous  people. 

They  talked,  with  the  gravity  of  a  precocious  nonage, 
of  capitalistic  forces  in  the  United  States,  of  Wall  Street, 
and  British  influences,  while  the  rest  of  the  world  was 
worrying  over  epidemic  Hell  and  the  best  way  of  abating 
it.  In  the  midst  of  an  America  frankly  up  in  the  air 
after  trying  to  comprehend,  for  three  years,  and  under 
large  difficulties,  perhaps  the  greatest  event  in  world- 
history,  they  took  to  themselves  an  air  of  disgusted  and 
erudite  omniscience;  for  they  had  private  sources  of 
information,  news  of  disasters  and  influences  not  at  the 
command  of  the  nation's  wise  men;  and  their  air  of 
infantile  cocksureness  was  increased  by  the  amazement 
their  bland  revelations-of-large-improbabilities-unto-babes 
aroused  in  their  war-worried  acquaintances.  They  added 
some  humor  to  the  situation,  of  course,  and  they  would 
have  added  more  if  their  Anti-Truth-and-Freedom-ism 
had  not  been  so  dangerous  a  thing. 

When  not  elucidating  the  war,  they  went  about  their 
business  of  enlightenment  and  adventure  chiefly  on  the 
sexual  plane,  since  Radicalism  demanding  larger  co 
operation  seemed,  for  the  moment,  to  be  shelved.  Clo- 
tilde  had  been  glad  to  leave  this  somewhat  narrowed  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  105 

degenerate  Modernism  for  a  bit  of  enlightenment  and 
adventure  not  on  the  sexual  plane.  Mr.  Carey  Beemis, 
not  so  blessed,  had  sought  her  co-operation  along  more 
conventionally  radical  lines.  Their  disagreement  resulted 
from  the  fact  that  Clotilde  desired  co-operation  in  estab 
lishing  the  Truth  as  between  free  fathers  and  free  daugh 
ters,  rather  than  as  between  free  men  and  women. 

Her  disappointment  was  the  more  acute  because  Mr. 
Beemis  had  begun  by  showing  every  evidence  of  being 
interested,  thoroughly  and  solely,  in  her  own  problem. 
He  had  warmed  to  the  first  hint  of  it,  which  had  not 
altogether  escaped  him  even  in  his  joy  at  meeting  her, 
that  hint  she  had  let  fall  in  wishing  that  Edna  had  intro 
duced  her  by  her  real  name,  something  or  other  that  he 
didn't  catch. 

Later  in  the  same  evening,  after  the  general  atmos 
phere  had  recovered  from  the  shock  created  by  Edna's 
thoughtful  linking  of  him  with  Miss  Helen  Hope,  he  had 
gravitated  toward  Clotilde  and  resurrected  the  hint : 

"  What  was  Edna  getting  at,  anyway,  in  hesitating 
over  your  name  ?  I  hope  it  doesn't  mean  you've  entered 
the  holy  bonds  ?  " 

"  No,  it  doesn't,"  Clotilde  told  him  decidedly;  adding, 
with  that  devotion  to  the  naked  truth  characteristic  of 
her  milieu  and  herself :  "  It  meant  merely  that  I'd  dis 
covered  that  Mr.  Westbrook  wasn't  my  real  father — that 
my  name  wasn't  really  Westbrook." 

"Why,  how  perfectly  charming!"  There  was  some 
thing  gossipy  and  ladylike  about  his  interest,  as,  indeed, 
there  was  about  all  of  him,  a  possible  result  of  the  fact 
that  all  of  his  intimate  and  vital  associations  had  been 
with  women. 


106  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"I  hadn't  thought  of  it  as  charming,  exactly."  She 
was  far  less  ladylike  than  he  was. 

He  explained:  "Of  course  it  would  depend  on  the — 
the  discovered  ancestry,  wouldn't  it?  But  I  referred 
rather  to  your  deliciously  frank  and  simple  way  of  an 
nouncing  it.  There  really  is  something  new  under  the 
sun,  you  know — you  can't  get  around  it!  Such  a  cool, 
simple,  altogether  sensible  treatment  of  such  a  theme,  by 
a  girl  of  your  age,  would  have  been  utterly  impossible 
twenty — yes,  even  ten  years  ago.  Utterly  impossible ! " 

"  I  suppose  it  would,"  admitted  Clotilde,  rather  bored; 
she,  on  the  other  hand,  preferred  men  to  women  con 
fidants.  Mr.  Beemis,  cleverly  inferring  from  her  air  that 
less  persiflage  would  be  welcome,  continued :  "  I  suppose 
I'm  showing  my  ignorance  even  to  mention  it;  but  the 
world,  you  know,  still  contains  a  good  many  antediluvian 
ideas  and  attitudes." 

"  It  certainly  does !  "  Clotilde  warmed  up  a  little. 
"  It  seems  I  can't  even  tell  the  truth,  the  undiscreditable 
truth,  about  my  ancestry  without  stirring  everybody  up." 

"  Ridiculous !  " 

"  As  if  it  weren't  as  creditable  to  be  born  illegitimate 
as  legitimate — or  more  creditable,  if  one  overcomes  the 
handicap."  She  was  watching  him  out  of  the  corner  of 
her  eyes  for  signs  of  shock;  he  revealed  only  pleased 
surprise  and  approbation.  "  As  if,"  she  continued,  with 
a  rising  opinion  of  his  attitude  toward  the  truth,  "  the 
pronunciation  of  a  few  stale  and  foolish  vows  could  make 
any  difference ! " 

He  nodded  gravely.  "  But  you  must  remember  that, 
even  though  all  this  seems  the  veriest  platitudes  to  us,  it 
might  be  capable  of  conveying  quite  a  shock  to  mediaeval 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  107 

minds,  of  which  the  world  is  full."  He  was  quietly  con 
templative,  genial,  tolerant  even  of  mediaeval  error.  "  At 
any  rate,  there's  a  certain  stimulation  in  recognizing  one's 
superiority  to  one's  temporal  atmosphere,  isn't  there? 
Looking  down  on  the  zeit-geist,  you  know — reminds  me 
of  my  college  Latin,  and  good  old  Lucretius.  For 
Modernity,  go  to  the  old  Greeks !  " 

He  said  it  rather  loudly.  "  Hear,  hear!  "  commented 
Edna,  from  the  other  side  of  the  room;  she  had  been 
displaying  signs  of  nervousness,  and  so  had  Miss  Hope, 
ever  since  Carey  got  Clotilde  in  a  corner.  "  Come  over 
here,  you  two,  and  tell  us  all  about  Modernity  and  the 
old  Greeks!" 

"  Oh,  that's  Carey's  hobby,"  put  in  Miss  Hope,  assert 
ing  her  intimacy  with  Carey's  hobbies. 

"  Come  tell  us  about  it!  "  insisted  Edna,  to  Carey. 

"  I  go — to  defend  my  assailed  hobby !  "  Carey  replied 
to  the  group,  rising  as  Clotilde  rose.  To  Clotilde  he  mur 
mured  :  "  I'd  like  awfully  to  talk  over  that  matter  with 
you — sometime  when  you're  at  liberty."  And  Clotilde 
replied:  "  I'd  like  to  have  you.  You're  the  first  person 
I've  met  lately  who  hasn't  been  shocked  silly  by  a  little 
plain  speaking." 

Clotilde  had  been  more  or  less  at  liberty  the  next 
morning,  after  eleven  o'clock.  The  Klings  had  gone  out 
to  lunch,  while  she  preferred  to  remain  in  the  bungalow 
to  write  a  letter  to  her  mother,  recording  progress — or 
the  lack  of  it.  Mr.  Beemis  cleverly  discovered  the  fact 
of  Clotilde's  solitude  in  the  course  of  a  conversation  at 
the  regular  mid-morning  post-office  gathering,  when 
Skeeter  delivered  the  mail  from  West  Beacon.  "  I 
could  bite  my  tongue  out  for  letting  him  worm  that 


io8  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

out  of  me ! "  Edna  told  Arthur  as  Carey  lightsomely 
departed. 

"  Why — I  guess  Clotilde  can  take  care  of  herself," 
hazarded  Arthur,  with  his  habitual  vague  surprise  at 
Edna's  remarks. 

"  It  isn't  that,  you  goose!  She's  perfectly  capable  of 
taking  care  of  herself — for  all  her  wild  talk.  I'm  think 
ing  of  wry-self.  Helen  Hope's  stock  of  conniptions  is 
the  most  violent  and  wearing  on  the  nerves  of  any  I've 
ever  associated  with,  and  I'm  simply  not  up  to  the  job 
of  nursing  her  through  a  fresh  series!  The  next  time 
she  comes  into  my  kitchen  and  wants  to  cut  her  throat 
with  my  bread-knife,  I  shall  request  her  to  take  the  knife 
along  and  mess  up  her  own  kitchen — I  have  too  much 
trouble  keeping  mine  in  order  as  it  is ! " 

Arthur  protested  weakly :  "  Really,  dear,  I  don't  think 
you  ought  to  joke  about — " 

"It's  no  joke — it  would  be  just  like  her  to  do  it!" 
Edna  shot  in. 

Before  Arthur  had  time  to  rid  his  gentle  soul  of  the 
real  concern  these  threatened  difficulties  caused  him, 
exaggerated  though  he  suspected  them  to  be,  Mr.  Carey 
Beemis'  athletic  legs  had  hurried  him  up  the  half-mile 
of  road,  along  the  footpath  through  a  hundred  yards  of 
meadow,  and  up  over  the  little  rocky  crag  to  the  Klings' 
door. 

The  door  was  open,  and  Clotilde,  half-coiffured, 
dressed  in  the  morning  negligee  of  Chinese-blue  silk 
crepe,  was  discovered  writing  her  letter. 

"  Oh,  hello !  "  announced  Mr.  Beemis,  in  a  way  that 
made  it  rather  an  admiring  comment  than  a  greeting,  and 
sauntered  inside.  "Hope  I'm  not  disturbing  you?" 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  109 

He  came  toward  her,  forcing  her  to  leave  her  writing^ 
by  the  very  imposing  sprightliness  of  himself  and  his 
clothes  keeping  her  attention.  "  Just  heard  from  Edna 
you'd  been  deserted  up  here — thought  I'd  just  run  up  and 
invite  you  down  to  luncheon  at  the  Inn — it  isn't  half  bad, 
really." 

"  Why — I'm  writing  a  letter,"  Clotilde  told  him,  rather 
stupidly. 

"  It's  a  shame  to  be  writing  a  letter  on  a  morning  like 
this — even  a  letter  to  France!"  he  protested,  debonair, 
lightly  throwing  out  a  bait. 

"To  France?"  she  repeated,  still  with  half  her  mind 
on  the  important  and  rather  hectic  matters  she  had  been 
detailing  to  Mrs.  Emily  Westbrook,  Alvaredo  Street, 
San  Francisco. 

"  Excuse  my  presumption — just  fancied  you  might  be 
writing — "  At  least  he  had  her  full  attention,  now,  and 
he  made  the  most  of  it.  " — to  someone  getting  a  little 
poetical  inspiration  out  of  the  squabble  over  there.  You 
see,  I'm  unmannerly  frank — it's  always  getting  me  into 
hot  water ! " 

"Oh,  you  mean  Clement  Townes,  I  suppose?"  Clo 
tilde  was  casual  to  the  point  of  boredness.  "  No,  I 
haven't  heard  from  him  since  he  went  over,  and  I  hardly 
expect  to.  He  went  into  the  ambulance  service,  didn't 
he?" 

"  Yes — at  first — and  I  sometimes  wish  I'd  gone,  too." 
He  sat  down  and  went  on,  with  only  a  suppressed  sigh 
and  a  melancholy  grimace  by  way  of  explanation  for  the 
wish.  "  I  daresay  it  was  nothing  but  the  desire  for  copy 
that  sent  him  into  the  Lafayette  Escadrille.  His 
hurrah- for- war  letters  in  the  New  York  Tribune  sound 


I  io  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

pretty  hollow — not  but  that  he  writes  well,  but  it's  rather 
sickening  to  see  him  going  back  on  First  Principles. 
S'pose  you've  seen  some  of  'em?  " 

"  I  don't  read  anything  that  touches,  however  lightly, 
on  the  war,"  said  Clotilde,  repeating  a  formula.  Never 
theless,  she  considered  the  matter  of  Clement  Townes. 
"  What  is  the  Lafayette  Escadrille?  "  she  asked. 

"  An  aviation  squad,  backed  by  a  lot  of  wealthy  mili 
tarists  in  New  York.  It  supplies  an  outlet  for  the  in 
trepid  and  useless  sons  of  the  idle  rich  who've  got  tired 
of  hunting  rabbits  and  ducks.  Young  brutes !  Townes 
is  pretty  soft  putty  if  he's  allowed  his  head  to  be  turned 
by  association  with  them.  He  went  abroad,  in  the  first 
place,  to  escape  the  draft — and  to  preach  sedition  among 
the  wounded — at  least,  that's  what  he  said.  Lively  brand 
of  sedition  he's  been  preaching  in  the  war-crazy  old 
Trib!  He  won't  have  a  friend  in  the  Village  when  he 
gets  back — mark  my  words !  " 

Mr.  Beemis,  being  a  member  of  the  Modernistic- 
Pacifistic  clique  that  was  still  trying  to  talk  the  war  out 
of  existence,  was  pardonably  bitter.  Clotilde,  never  hav 
ing  been  much  interested  in  the  war  except  to  despise  it, 
commented  neither  cne  way  nor  the  other.  What  was  it 
to  her  that  the  erstwhile  mincing  poet  of  the  lines  to 
eyebrows  and  eyes  felinely  luminous  in  the  dark  had 
turned  renegade  to  Radicalism — and  to  his  ambulance 
corps?  He  had  been  gone  eight  months.  In  the  press 
of  later  matters  and  adorers,  she  had  practically  forgotten 
him. 

"  Excuse  me,  Mr.  Beemis — but  I  really  must  finish  my 
letter  to  my  mother,"  she  said. 

"  Oh,  pardons — I'm.  a  brute! "    He  rose  with  alacrity, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  in 

but  paused,  like  a  departing  feminine  guest,  for  further 
gossip.  "  You  know,  it  was  just  what  you  said  to  me 
last  evening — I've  been  thinking  of  your  situation — • 
what  a  lot  of  hard  knocks  you  must  have  got,  and 
will  get,  if  you're  as  frank  to  everyone  as  you  were  to 
me!" 

"  Yes — I  have  got  some  knocks — and  pushes,"  ad 
mitted  Clotilde. 

"  It's  diabolically  hard  to  put  a  thing  like  that  over, 
but  the  world  is  the  better  for  every  such  thing  that  is 
put  over,"  he  declared. 

Clotilde  nodded :  "  That's  what  I  think— and  what  I've 
said." 

Mr.  Beemis  sat  down  again.  "  It  really  needs  more 
heads  than  one.  A  group  can  put  over  a  thing  like  that, 
and  make  it  count,  better  than  an  individual.  I  believe 
in  group-action." 

"  Well — I  tried  to  start  group-action  up  here  by  telling 
Edna,  but—" 

"  Yes — she  distinctly  isn't  Modern,  as  much  as  she 
pretends  to  be.  For  a  typical,  old-fashioned  married 
regime,  look  at  her  and  poor  Arthur.  She  leads  him 
around  by  the  nose — by  Jove,  she  even  makes  him  go 
with  her  to  make  conventional  calls,  leave  conventional 
little  cards,  you  know !  "  Mr.  Beemis  edged  his  chair  six 
inches  nearer.  "  Now,  the  simple  truth  you  want  to  put 
over  is  that  you're  not — not  conventionally  born,  and 
you're  glad  of  it.  Isn't  that  it  ?  " 

"  Partly."  Clotilde  hesitated.  It  had  been  easier  to 
explain  the  exact  situation  to  Edna,  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Beemis'  more  advanced  views.  "  The  simple  fact  is,  I 
think  I'm  entitled  to  a  father — to  my  father.  I'd  like 


ii2  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

to  live  with  him  six  months  of  the  year,  and  with  mother 
the  other  six.  Mother  and  I  would  be  better  for  it — and 
father  and  I  would  be  much  better.  He  has  much  that  I 
need — and  I  certainly  could  do  a  lot  for  him.  It's  ridicu 
lous  that  everything  can't  be  treated  quite  sensibly  and 
openly — my  mother  agrees  with  me,  and  has  given  her 
consent,  but  my  father  objects,  and  Edna  has  violent 
hysterics — " 

"  Merciful  Heavens — was  that  all  that  sent  her  off  last 
evening?"  Mr.  Beemis,  in  disgusted  horror,  edged  his 
chair  a  good  ten  inches  nearer.  He  swayed  toward  Clo- 
tilde,  ballasted  with  sympathetic  indignation.  "  Why,  my 
dear,  just  let  me  explain  matters  to  a  few  intelligent 
beings,  here  and  in  the  Village,  and  it  can  be  arranged 
without  any  fuss  or  feathers,  I'm  sure.  Edna  is  me 
diaeval,  simply  mediaeval.  A  hang-over  from  the  Dark 
Ages.  Believe  me,  I've  suffered  from  her  antiquated 
views  myself! "  he  finished  darkly. 

But  Clotilde  was  self-centeredly  considering  her  own 
problem.  "  At  least  I  think — you  might  help  me  clear 
the  way  a  little."  She  pondered,  and  her  eyes  narrowed 
as,  in  the  course  of  her  ponderings,  she  came  across  a 
distinct  vision  of  Ethel.  "  I  want  to  see  my  father  again 
— I've  already  seen  him,  for  a  short  time,  but  we  were 
interrupted.  He's  a  poor,  broken-down  farmer,  running 
a  discouraged  farm  on  the  mountain — " 

"  Oh,  really  ?  "  Mr.  Beemis  beamed.  "  Say,  it  gets 
better  and  better!" 

"  Yes.  I  couldn't  have  chosen  better  if  I'd  had  a 
chance.  There's  good  old  Dutch  blood  in  his  veins,  too 
— not  that  ancestry  matters  half  as  much  as  environ 
ment—" 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  113 

"  Oh,  but  it  matters  a  good  deal !  We  have  only  to 
think  of  race  horses — " 

Clotilde  pursued  the  main  event :  "  Well,  I  want  to  see 
him  soon — alone.  Now,  if  you'd  just  go  up  to  his  farm 
some  time  this  afternoon,  and  get  word  to  him  that  I 
want  to  talk  to  him — first  making  sure  that  his  wife  is 
not  within  hearing  distance — " 

"  I  shall  be  delighted  to  do  it !  Then — the  plot  thickens 
— he  has  a  wife?  " 

"  Thank  you  so  much!  Yes,  he  has  a  wife,  and  she's 
more  mediaeval,  I  fancy,  than  Edna  ever  thought  of 
being.  Just  tell  him  to  come  right  down  here — or  I'll 
send  a  rig  up  for  him,  if  he'd  rather.  There — I'm  glad 
to  get  that  off  my  mind !  " 

Clotilde  rose,  gravitated  toward  the  door.  "  I  was 
thinking  of  getting  the  stage-boy,  or  someone  else,  to 
carry  a  message  up  for  me,  but  you'll  handle  it  much 
more  cleverly,  I'm  sure." 

Mr.  Beemis,  also,  arose,  but  he  did  not  fulfil  Clotilde's 
evident  expectation  that  he  would  accompany  her  to 
the  door  and  depart  on  her  errand.  He  paused,  hold 
ing  his  Alpine  hat  in  both  hands  at  the  level  of  his 
midriff,  looking  down  at  his  neat  tan  walking 
boots.  "  Yes,  Edna's  rather — mediaeval,"  he  observed. 
Clotilde  faced  around;  he  looked  at  her  with  frank, 
serious,  saddened  gray  eyes.  "  I  admit,  Miss  West- 
brook—" 

"  After  this,  I  think  you  may  call  me  by  my  real  name 
— Miss  Hooghtyling,"  she  said,  so  immersed  in  her 
own  problem  that  she  was  able  to  think  of  a  detail 
like  that  even  in  the  presence  of  the  confession  that 
was  plainly  struggling  up  for  utterance  from  the 


ii4  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

depths  of  Mr.  Beemis.  "  I  don't  care  for  the  connota 
tions  of  Westbrook — and  I  have  a  right  to  my  real 
name." 

"  Yes — certainly — Miss  Hooghtyling,"  he  said,  dis 
tracted  but  not  deterred ;  "  I  agree  with  you — the 
Dutch  before  the  English  always.  But  I  was  going 
to  say  that,  in  seeing  you  last  evening,  not  only  had 
I  been  inspired  with  the  idea  that  I  might  help  you, 
but  that  you — might  possibly — consent  to  help  me, 
also." 

Clotilde  waited  blankly,  a  trifle  impatiently.  The 
tacking  of  a  condition  onto  the  doing  of  a  favor  was 
singularly  unsuited  to  the  frank,  helpful,  self-forgetful 
character  that  Mr.  Beemis  had  displayed.  She  caught 
a  glimpse  of  his  egotism,  as  he  had  already  caught  several 
glimpses  of  hers.  "  The  fact  is,"  he  went  on,  now  that 
she  had  stopped,  coming  closer  to  her,  "  things  are  going 
to  break  up  with  me,  pretty  soon — and  the  report  Edna's 
going  to  spread  of  it  will  be  damnable — mediaeval  and 
damnable ! " 

Clotilde  said,  "  I  don't  exactly  understand."  And  she 
didn't  exactly,  but  she  did  almost. 

"  Oh,  I  mean — Miss  Hope."  He  threw  out  the  name 
with  as  much  frankness  as  if  it  had  been  an  old  pipe 
which  he  was  not  ashamed  of,  even  if  it  had  grown 
stale,  no  longer  suited  to  his  taste.  "  She's  a  wonder 
fully  fine  girl — a  wonderfully  fine  girl,  Miss  Hooghty 
ling!  No  one  realizes  that — no  one  has  had  a  better 
reason  to  realize  that,  than  myself.  But,  when  proven 
incompatibility — absolutely  tested  and  proven — "  He 
paused.  "  I  suppose,  before  I  made  this  revelation,  I 
should  have  assured  myself  that  you  have  the  Modern 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  115 

view  of  the  freedom  of  the  sexes  ?  "  he  asked,  raising  his 
eyebrows  a  little,  putting  the  question  as  if  it  had  been 
a  test  of  ordinary  sanity. 

Clotilde  admitted  the  formula.  "  I  do."  It  was  a 
forced  confession.  She  was  wondering  about  Helen 
Hope. 

"  So  do  others — in  theory — but,  now  that  it's  come  to 
a  plain  matter  of  fact,  of  action-determining  fact — well, 
one  must  go  slow.  Edna,  by  putting  a  false  interpre 
tation  on  my  actions,  a  mediaeval,  twisted,  till-death-it-do- 
them-part  interpretation — of  which  she's  quite  capable,  I 
assure  you, — can  make  things  miserable  for  me,  for  both 
of  us.  Now,  in  the  interest  of  Truth,  of  Modernism,  I 
ask  you  to  become  acquainted  with  the  facts — and  to 
spread  the  truth  about  them — by  way  of  counterblast  to 
Edna's  false  report — that's  all.  And  I  put  the  request 
not  only  on  the  basis  of  my  own  self-interest,  but  on  the 
basis  of  the  effect  a  false  interpretation  will  have  on 
society  at  large.  We  are  facing  dangers  of  reaction. 
Freedom,  as  between  men  and  women,  is  basic — it  must 
be  practised  as  well  as  preached,  now  as  never  before. 
I  ask  only  my  freedom — freedom  to  work,  to  love,  to  live 
— is  that  too  much  for  a  man  to  ask  in  this  day  and 
generation  ?  " 

"  Not  on  the  face  of  it,"  said  Clotilde,  with  some  cool 
ness.  There  were  all  the  old  formulas,  even  if  grown  a 
little  dusty  since  the  war  turned  public  attention  else 
where  :  all  the  old  formulas,  and  expressed  very  well,  too. 
She  had  agreed  to  them,  every  really  Modern  young 
woman  had  agreed  to  them,  a  hundred  times.  And  yet 
she  was  hesitant,  half-disgusted.  That  was  largely  be 
cause,  she  decided  with  a  good  deal  of  insight,  Mr. 


ii6  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Beemis  was  taking  up  so  much  time  on  his  own  problem 
>vhile  hers  needed  her  undivided  attention — as  well  as 
part  of  his  attention. 

At  any  rate,  he  had  given  the  countersign,  recited  the 
creed,  and  she  had  given  her  allegiance  to  the  creed. 
"Of  course,"  she  said,  "  if  women  are  going  to  break 
the  old  bonds,  they  must  bear  the  responsibility  that  goes 
with  breaking  them." 

"  Pre-cisely !  "  He  was  almost  devout  in  admiration 
of  that  ancient  and  platitudinous  formula,  more  than 
devout  in  his  admiration  of  her.  She  stood  tall  and 
straight,  calm-faced  as  some  modern  Portia  giving  judg 
ment.  If  she  had  been  gowned  and  coiffured  to  fit  the 
part,  she  might  have  carried  it  off;  but  the  clinging  morn 
ing  gown  of  delicate  blue  silk,  the  disarray  of  hair,  so 
entirely  and  distractingly  feminine,  surrounded  her  with 
an  aura  that  charmed  away  the  Portia-character  of  her 
face.  She  had  no  idea  that  she  was  rather  a  personified 
love-appeal  than  a  just  judge;  she  felt  for  Helen  Hope, 
for  thousands  of  Helen  Hopes,  past,  present,  and  to  be, 
and  yet  Truth  was  Truth,  Modernity  was  Modernity. 
Modernity's  newest  man-child  devoured  her  with  his 
eyes. 

"  You,  for  instance — "  he  began,  hesitated,  took  a 
fresh  start:  "In  place  of  the  woman,  nowadays,  the  man 
is  far  oftener  considered  to  emerge  stained,  disgraced, 
from  an  affair  of  this  sort.  The  woman  is  welcomed 
everywhere,  pitied,  praised  for  her  devotion  to  her  ideals; 
while  the  man — well,  he's  dishonored,  or  considered  to  be 
dishonored,  in  precisely  the  same  way  the  woman  used 
to  be.  Times  have  changed  with  a  vengeance!  Girl 
after  girl  gets  respectably  married  after  a  free-love  affair 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  117 

— it's  becoming  almost  something  to  be  proud  of,  a  sign 
of  eligibility  for  a  proper  old-fashioned  marriage — but  the 
man — especially  if  he  breaks  it  off — why,  actually,  I've 
known  good  Modernists  who  wouldn't  speak  to  a  man 
after  such  a  break — and  the  women,  the  very  girls  who 
preach  sex-freedom  loudest,  will  have  nothing  to  do  with 
him !  I  tell  you,  Modern  men  have  suffered  as  much  as 
Modern  women,  in  this  break  with  the  past — perhaps 
they've  suffered  more ! " 

"  Well— I  hadn't  thought  of  that  side  of  it."  She 
hadn't,  and  her  voice  said  she  was  not  particularly  in 
terested  in  thinking  of  it  just  then;  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
she  was  more  interested  in  Henry  Hooghtyling,  and 
Ethel,  and  herself,  egotist  that  she  was.  But  if  her  voice 
was  cool,  the  curves  of  soft  blue  Chinese  crepe,  the  ring 
leted  disarray  of  brown  hair,  the  color  in  each  rose- 
textured  cheek,  contained  warmth  enough  for  any  half- 
susceptible  heart. 

"  You,  for  instance,"  repeated  Beemis ;  "  wouldn't 
you  feel  an  objection,  essentially  a  moral  objection, 
to  receiving  the  attentions  of  a  man — Oh,  let's  be 
frank,  for  I  think  we  can  be! — wouldn't  you  feel  a 
really  moral  objection  to  having  a  man  like  myself 
love  you  ?  " 

"  I  would  not."  Her  voice  was  repellent  as  a  thistle, 
but  nearly  all  the  rest  of  her  shrieked  an  unconscious 
invitation.  With  sudden  fire  in  his  eyes,  Mr.  Beemis 
stepped  close  to  her,  put  his  arm  around  her  waist,  stared 
down  at  her  with  all  the  hypnotic  intensity  of  a  large, 
well-schooled  masculine  desire.  It  was  during  this  in 
terval  that  Skeeter,  having  made  his  way  across  the 
porch  like  a  second-story  man  for  softness,  perspiring 


ii8  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

expectation  and  awe  at  every  pore,  reached  the  front  door 
and  palpitatingly,  softly,  knocked. 

He  heard  scraps  of  the  ensuing  conversation,  from  the 
"Please  take  your  arm  away/'  through  the  "Plop!", 
down  to  Mr.  Beemis'  philosophical,  "  Well — such  is 
life ! "  without  being  able  to  move  a  muscle.  He 
thought,  once,  of  running  away;  he  thought,  twice, 
of  entering  and  endeavoring  to  "  beat  up "  Mr. 
Carey  Beemis;  when  silence  fell  again,  due  to  the  fact 
that  Mr.  Beemis  had  settled  himself  for  inspection, 
he  knocked  with  boldness  and  decision.  He  had 
kept  his  head,  and  he  felt  much  better  for  having 
kept  it. 

Clotilde  came  to  the  door.  Even  in  the  face  of  the 
vision  of  aroused  loveliness  that  she  presented,  a 
vision  that  discounted  his  rosiest  advance  dream  of 
what  it  might  be,  he  lost  not  one  jot  nor  tittle  of  his 
head. 

"  Excuse  me,"  he  said,  demonstrating  ease  by  a 
friendly  smile,  "  but  I  was  sent  up  here  with  a  message 
for  you.  Maybe  we  better  go  over  to  the  end  of  the 
porch  there,  while  I  tell  you.  I  was  told  not  to  go  blub- 
bin'  it  around." 

She  accompanied  him  to  a  distant  corner  of  the 
verandah,  and  heard  his  creditable  paraphrase  of  Mr. 
Hooghtyling's  message.  "  That's  fine !  "  she  said.  "  I'll 
go  right  up.  Thank  you  so  much. — But  wait  just  a 
minute — I  want  to  get  you  something  as  a  token  of  my 
appreciation,  you  know." 

"  Nothing — I  won't  take  nothing  for  doing  this 
errant,"  Skeeter  objected,  waving  a  liberal  hand, 
showing  his  state  of  her  most  humble  retainer  only  in 


STRAYED  REVELLERS 

devotional  blue  eyes.  "  I  was  glad  to  do  it — more'n 
glad,  believe  me! " 

Still  he  lingered,  quite  as  unable  to  tear  himself  away 
as  Mr.  Beemis  had  been;  and  yet  it  was  a  politer,  more 
natural  and  humble  lingering.  In  his  best  pepper-and- 
salt  suit  and  white  collar,  he  attained  a  high  level  of 
gentlemanly  politeness,  as  well  as  of  pinkness,  freshness, 
the  wholesome  vigor  of  a  self-respecting,  diligent  country 
stripling.  Clotilde  decided  abruptly :  "  I'd  be  glad  if 
you'd  wait  here  a  few  minutes  till  I  dress,  and  walk  up 
with  me — you  could  show  me  the  place,  you  know.  That 
is,  if  you  have  time?  " 

"  Yes'm — got  lots  o'  time — glad  to  do  it ! "  said 
Skeeter  fervently. 

While  she  returned  into  the  house,  he  sat  down  on  a 
corner  of  the  porch  and  made  a  point  of  hearing 
nothing  whatever,  as  much  as  he  would  have  enjoyed  to 
hear;  his  mind  was  relieved  of  some  misgivings  when,  a 
moment  later,  Mr.  Carey  Beemis  sauntered  cheerfully 
forth,  glanced  about  with  the  pleased  air  of  a  young 
man  at  peace  with  himself  and  the  world,  nodded  affably 
at  Skeeter,  and  proceeded  jauntily  down  the  footpath 
that  led  to  the  road.  A  brilliant  red  blotch  on  one  cheek, 
noticed  with  feelings  akin  to  tumultuous  joy  by  the  stage- 
boy,  was  the  only  jarring  note  in  all  his  complaisant 
well-being. 

With  animus  that  checked  even  a  return  nod, 
Skeeter  watched  him  go,  and  breathed  more  easily 
when  he  had  disappeared.  His  disappearance  removed 
the  only  small  cloud  on  all  of  Skeeter's  horizon.  He 
gave  himself  up  to  anticipations  of  his  shining  adventure, 
no  less  than  a  mile  walk  in  company  with  the  most 


120  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

entrancingly  attractive  person  in  the  world.  What  would 
she  say  to  him,  what  should  he  say  to  her,  while  they — 
his  heart  thumped  as  a  more  sophisticated  youth's  might 
have  thumped  for  an  approaching  bridal — while  they 
"walked  out"  together?  Skeeter  speculated,  and 
dreamed  dreams. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A  DETAIL,  FOUNDED  ON  AN  OLD  ROMANCE,  MODERN- 

IZED    AND    IMPROVED    BY    MISS    CLOTILDE 

HOOGHTYLING 

"  I  DON'T  believe  I  know  your  name  yet,"  said  Clotilde. 
"  My  complete  name's  James  G.  Elaine  Reilly,  but 
mostly  I  get  called  '  Skeeter.' ' 

She  found  that  as  diverting  as  he  had  hoped   she 
would.     "Why  'Skeeter'?" 

"  Well,  some  on  'em  said  I  was  always  buzzin'  round 
lookin'  for  blood;  I  was  consid'able  of  a  fightin'  character 
when  I  was  a  boy.     Strange  what  boys  will  be  up  to." 
"  And  what  is  your  present  advanced  age  ?  " 
"  You're  right — I'm  not  so  old."     He  had  caught  her 
ironical  drift  perfectly,  to  her  surprise,  but  he  showed  no 
rancor.     "I'm  goin'  on  nineteen;  but  I  may  be  beyont 
my  years,  what  with  workin'  steady  for  the  last  seven- 
eight  years." 

"  I'm  sure  you  are — and  you're  Irish,  too,  aren't  you  ?  " 
"  My  folks  was.     I  guess  I'm  just  plain  American." 
He  said  it  with  a  certain  ring  on  the  "  American." 
So  the  germs  of  Patriotism,  Clotilde  thought,  had  been 
carried  by  the  winds  of  the  world-war  even  to  this  shut-in 
corner   of    the   earth.     And    yet    Skeeter's    Patriotism 
did  not  assault  her  nerves  as  the  New  York  variety  had 
begun  to  do.     She  remembered  a  huge  sign  at  the  en 
trance  of  a  department  store :  "  PATRIOTS !     Carry 


122  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Your  Bundles  Home,  and  Help  Your  Country ! "  In  the 
purer  country  air  the  disease  could  run  its  course  without 
those  sickening  manifestations  so  common  in  the  city. 
God  would  deliver  Woodbridge  sooner  than  many  places 
of  the  recrudescent  plague  of  sectionalism  and  its  dirty 
off-scourings. 

"  My  mother  promised  to  sign  my  papers,"  announced 
Skeeter,  whose  mind,  also,  had  followed  his  Patriotic 
"  American  "  into  warlike  fields,  "  come  the  first  o'  next 
month,  if  I  still  want  to  go.  She  wouldn't  sign  'em  last 
fall,  said  I  had  to  take  six  months  to  think  it  over.  Your 
folks  got  to  sign  your  papers  if  you're  less'n  twenty-one. 
I  guess  I'll  be  on  my  way  in  'bout  two  weeks." 

She  checked  the  frank,  flat  arguments  that  rose  to  her 
lips;  Henry  Hooghtyling  had  taught  her  something  of 
the  devious  mental  processes,  the  shy  naturalness,  of  the 
natives.  She  proceeded  carefully :  "  Haven't  you  ever 
thought,  James,  that  there  might  be  something  foolish 
about  all  this  fighting?  You  said,  a  minute  ago,  that  you 
used  to  fight  when  you  were  a  boy,  and  you  spoke  as 
if  you'd  been  foolish  to  do  it.  Suppose  all  this  present 
brutal  fighting  has  been  started  by  a  lot  of  overgrown, 
brutal,  under-civilized  boys?  Mightn't  it  be  foolish,  all 
this  enlisting,  training?" 

"  They's  a  lot  that's  foolish  about  it !  "  She  glanced 
at  him  with  surprise  for  his  violent  agreement.  "  Why, 
you  know  what?  They  won't  let  a  man  enlist  in  the 
aviation  corps  'thout  he's  had  a  college  education.  I  call 
that  foolish — and  it  ain't  democratic,  neither!  Do  you 
think  it  is?" 

"  No — no,  it  isn't."  Clotilde  was  dashed,  but  amused ; 
his  patriotic  quirk  was  like  the  quirks  in  his  speech,  his 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  123 

clothes:  she  had  heard  of  country  flavor.  "  So,  now  you 
want  to  do  your  fighting  from  the  sky?  " 

"  Oh,  boy ! "  agreed  Skeeter,  and  was  silent  with 
pure  emotion. 

Perhaps  the  recent  Modernist,  Clement  Townes,  Clo- 
tilde  meditated,  might  have  felt  some  of  that  juvenile 
enthusiasm  for  sailing  through  the  air  and  dropping 
ungentle  things  upon  the  ground  beneath.  Clement  had 
always  had  a  vein  of  the  boy  running  through  his  sophis 
tication — as  most  young  men  had.  What  boys  they  were, 
these  men,  with  a  boy's  eagerness  for  a  fight !  She  read 
in  Skeeter's  eager  beardless  face  the  history  of  the  recent 
retrogression  of  the  race. 

"  I  s'pose  you've  got  some  friends  in  the  army — near 
everybody  has,  nowadays,"  suggested  Skeeter. 

"  No — not  a  friend."  She  would  not  increase 
Skeeter's  youthful  blood-thirst  by  telling  him  of  Clement 
Townes,  with  the  Lafayette  squadron.  Besides,  Mr. 
Townes  was  no  longer  her  friend. 

Clement,  sophisticated,  rather  mincing,  rather  girlish 
of  mien  and  figure,  a  typical  Modern  youth  somewhat 
resembling  Mr.  Carey  Beemis,  with  all  of  Mr.  Beemis' 
predilections  toward  modern  love  and  kindred  Modern 
isms — she  had  always  rather  despised  him,  even  while 
forcing  approbation  for  him  on  the  ground  of  his  Mod 
ernism.  There  had  been  something  unholy,  unnatural, 
about  his  attempt  to  make  love  to  her.  He  had  never 
seemed  altogether  a  man:  she  had  treated  him  much  as 
if  he  had  been  a  good  girl  friend.  He  had  joined  in 
her  revels  of  new  ideas  and  more  substantial  things,  he 
had  answered  her  unoccupied  youth's  great  need  for 
someone  to  play  with.  She  smiled,  remembering  the 


124  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

incident  of  nis  clipped  name;  he  had  signed  himself,  first, 
"  John  Clement  Townes,"  then,  "  J.  Clement  Townes," 
and  finally  "  Clement  Townes,"  explaining  that,  by 
changing  his  name,  he  freshened  himself  up  to  himself, 
kept  himself  from  being  bored  by  constant  association 
with  his  own  personality.  Even  Modernistic  revels, 
either  because  he  was  rusting  for  lack  of  something  better 
to  do  or  because  he  was  good  for  nothing,  even  revelling, 
had  not  relieved  his  besetting  boredom.  She  wondered 
if  he  found  relief  from  it  in  flying  a  fighting  airplane: 
and  whether,  if  he  did,  that  showed  that  he  had  finer,  or 
baser  inner  metal  than  the  still-modernizing  Modernists. 
Would  she  feel  any  special  regrets  if  he  were  shot  down, 
or  fell  and  broke  his  neck?  Had  he  become  more  of  a 
man  over  there?  What  sort  of  stuff  was  he  writing  for 
the  Tribune?  Had  he  really  changed,  or  was  his  mili 
taristic  stuff  merely — 

"  Quite  a  few  from  around  here  has  gone,"  said 
Skeeter  politely. 

"  They  had  to  go — in  the  draft,  I  suppose,"  Clotilde 
countered. 

"  Well,  some  on  'em  wanted  to  go,  and  some  didn't," 
said  Skeeter,  "  but  they  all  went  when  they  was  called. 
And  they  was  a  lot  o'  foolishness  'bout  that,  too.  They 
was  one  feller,  fine  a  lad's  ever  you  see,  wanted  to  go, 
but  he  was  over  draft  age,  and  the  girl  he  was  keepin' 
comp'ny  with  wouldn't  let  him  volunteer.  Well,  one  day 
he  got  drunk,  and  went  over  to  Lake  Katrine  where  they 
was  doin'  the  examinin',  and  says  to  the  doctor,  '  I  want 
to  go  to  France.'  The  doctor  says,  '  We  take  no  boozers.' 
'  I'll  give  you  ten  dollars,  all  I  got,  to  send  me  over  to 
France/  says  the  lad,  pullin'  out  the  money — but  they 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  125 

turned  him  out — wouldn't  have  him — said  they  didn't 
want  no  boozers  and  took  a  lot  o'  fellers  not  half  the  lad 
that  lad  is.  And  it  was  the  first  time  he'd  ever  been 
drunk's  fur's  anybody  remembered — he  wasn't  a  boozer 
— he'd  just  got  to  thinkin'  how  maybe  it  was  his  duty, 
and  got  drunk  because  his  girl  wou — " 

Skeeter's  voice  went  dead,  in  the  middle  of  a  word; 
a  slight  accident  was  happening  to  Clotilde. 

In  turning  a  corner  of  the  old  dirt  road,  a  blackberry 
shoot,  grown  long  and  supple  and  swaying  out  toward 
the  open  from  its  overcrowded  copse,  had  fastened  on  the 
good  holding  surface  offered  by  her  pongee  skirt;  before 
she  could  stop,  it  had  pulled  backward  and  upward, 
lifting  her  skirt  and  the  one  silken  petticoat  decreed  by 
fashion,  lifting  and  tightening  until  both  were  level  with 
her  knees.  Delicate  blue  silk,  delicate  curves  surpassing 
those  of  the  long  petals  of  any  blue  iris  of  the  Wood- 
bridge  valley,  outlined  the  legs  revealed  to  Skeeter's 
eyes. 

Clotilde  stopped,  struggling  with  the  accidental  spray. 
Skeeter  stopped  also,  as  quietly,  pallidly  concerned  as 
if  he  suspected  the  receipt  of  a  sudden  bullet-wound  in 
some  vital  part.  Only  country-bred  youth,  unused  to 
feminine  limbs  as  plentitudinously  revealed  in  theaters, 
restaurants,  and  at  bathing  beaches,  could  have  experi 
enced  or  understood  the  translation  that  was  his.  The 
world  in  general  had  grown  accustomed  to  the  fact  that 
even  women  were  bipeds ;  it  was  a  spread  of  truth  in  line 
with  the  times,  and  it  offered  indubitable  advantages  to 
compensate  for  the  lost  piquancy  of  mystery;  but  no 
innocuous  desuetude  dulled  the  edge  of  Woodbridge 
Skeeter's  surprise. 


126  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Please  hold  the  bush— bother  it  all !  "  fussed  Clotllde, 
candidly  unconscious  that  she  was  playing  Sais  unveiled 
to  the  gawking  country  youth.  She  got  a  suggestion  of 
it  as  he  stumbled  over  against  the  offending  bush;  a 
glance  as  his  brick-red  face,  before  he  hastily  averted  it, 
gave  her  that.  "  It's  a  beastly  bush !  "  she  complained, 
getting  her  skirts  free  again,  giving  half  an  eye  to 
appraisal  of  Skeeter.  Skeeter  did  not  even  see  that 
she  was  free  until  she  told  him,  "  All  right — thank 
you!" 

She  began  to  get  some  of  his  emotion,  vaguely  to 
understand  it.  Was  it  possible  that  her  little  misadven 
ture — what  na'ive,  bucolic,  interesting  ignorance!  She 
was  surprised,  amused,  by  his  very  freshness,  callowness, 
the  spontaneity  and  richness  of  his  amatory  instincts,  her 
almost  magical  power  over  them — she  smiled,  flushed, 
was  inspirited,  releasing  some  of  the  inward  tension  that 
Mr.  Beemis'  large  and  conventional  attack  had  created  in 
her,  even  while  she  repelled  it. 

"  I  hope  you  weren't  shocked ! "  she  said,  without  in 
tending  to  say  it,  without  knowing  why  she  said  it, 
without  knowing  much  except  that  she  had  been  made 
peculiarly  gay,  buoyant,  by  her  little  mishap,  and  the 
grave  country  youth's  reaction  to  it.  Fundamentally,  her 
attitude  harmonized  pretty  well  with  his :  much  more 
than  hers  did,  say,  with  Mr.  Beemis',  thorough  virgin 
that  she  was  in  fact  and  subconsciously,  however  much 
her  Modernism  might  have  disprized  virginity.  Sex  with 
her,  also,  beneath  her  wise  words  and  her  surprising  intel 
lectual  grasp  of  it,  was  a  thing  of  impalpable  nuances, 
of  tones  and  shades  as  undecipherable  by  her  science,  or 
by  anybody  else's,  as  a  September  iris — of  mystery  deeper 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  127 

than  any  man's  Truth,  and  of  gently  bubbling  mush.  She 
could  no  more  keep  from  rallying  Skeeter  a  little  than 
a  rose  can  keep  from  nodding  its  full-blown  head  in  the 
wind.  "  I  hope  you  weren't  shocked  ?  "  she  had  said,  and 
the  truth  about  young  women  flowered  more  freely  in 
the  unintended  faint  archness  of  the  words  than  in  reams 
of  her  matter-of-fact  deductions  concerning  sex  in  its 
relation  to  her. 

Skeeter  understood  her  universal  language,  saw  that 
he  was  being  rallied.  Years  of  every-day  dissimula 
tion  came  to  reinforce  his  natural  wisdom  of  suppression 
in  matters  of  young  and  tender  emotions.  '  That  was 
too  bad,"  he  announced,  gruffly  regretful;  "it's  the  law 
everyone  has  to  cut  the  bushes  along  the  road  in  August ; 
but  Brooks  always  lets  his  go  till  October.  Hope  it  didn't 
tear  your  dress?" 

"  Oh,  no."  She  looked  at  him  inquiringly  as  he 
tramped  along,  in  stodgy  indifference,  at  the  other  side 
of  the  road.  Except  for  heightened  color,  fast  fading  to 
customary  pinkness,  and  a  scowl  of  regretful  disgust,  he 
was  as  calm  as  Mr.  Hooghtyling's  cucumber.  With  such 
an  air  he  might  have  bargained  for  a  motor-bus — or  an 
airplane.  He  would  have  been  quite  ready  to  see  the 
point  if  he  had  been  told  that  certain  cynics  classified 
pretty  ladies  with  these  and  other  much-desired  com 
modities,  and  recommended  precisely  his  tactics  in  coming 
by  all  of  them. 

"  Brooks  could  be  fined  for  leavin'  that  bush  there," 
he  told  her,  as  if  the  bush  had  caused  him  a  grave  per 
sonal  annoyance. 

She  wondered  at  him.  Had  he  really  been  exhilarated, 
or  had  he  merely  been  shamed  ?  Queer  ideas  of  modesty 


128  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

these  country  people  had — a  soured  Puritanism  that  made 
shameful,  sour,  many  of  the  most  beautiful  Truths  of 
life.  She  remembered  Edna's  popular  drawing-room 
story  of  the  good  old  Woodbridge  farm-wife  who  had 
said  she  never  could  have  forgiven  herself  if  her  husband 
had  ever  seen  her  without  any  clothes  on.  There  was 
less  humor  in  that  for  Clotilde  than  protest  against  a 
mind  so  perverted.  Did  the  callow  youth  at  her  side 
share  a  general  Woodbridge  repugnance  for  beauty  when 
it  was  connected  with  sex — as  nine-tenths  of  all  discov 
ered  beauty  this  side  of  the  heavens  undoubtedly  is? 
Had  his  glimpse  been  rare  wine  or  shameful  mid-road 
puddle  water  to  him  ?  Purely  as  an  intellectual  problem, 
she  told  herself,  that  was  as  interesting  as  any  chapter 
of  Forel. 

But  she  was  emotionally  uninterested  in  intellectual 
problems  just  then.  What  a  gold  and  green  day  it  was 
— how  the  pure  soft  wind  came  rolling  down  over  the 
shoulder  of  old  blue  Teyce  Ten  Eyck  to  northward ! 
"  What  a  day  it  is — there's  nothing  ragged  or  forlorn 
about  September  up  in  these  old  hills ! "  she  said,  rather 
to  herself  than  to  the  dour  and  downcast  Skeeter. 
"  It's  all  fresh,  and  young,  and  beautiful — as  '  September 
Morn ' !  "  She  mentioned  the  title  of  a  picture,  popu 
larized  by  Comstockian  wrath,  a  picture  of  a  young  girl 
bathing.  Why,  she  asked  herself,  should  her  mind  run 
toward  unclothedness  ?  and  had  a  reply  ready  in  the  well- 
exploited  fact  that  all  beauty,  even  the  beauty  of  a  Sep 
tember  afternoon,  keenly  felt,  is  capable  of  turning  the 
mind  in  that  general  direction.  There  was  warrant 
enough  for  considering  no  landscape  perfect  without  the 
glint  of  white  limbs  somewhere — 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  129 

"It's  a  wonder!"  admitted  Skeeter,  lifting  his  face 
to  the  bepraised  day.  His  look  lightened,  lost  its  glum- 
ness  and  disgust.  "  It's  sure  a  wonder! "  he  repeated, 
and  took  a  breath  of  pure  mountain  air.  "  But,  say,  you 
ought  to  see  it  in  October — all  sorts  of  colors — nothin' 
but  the  woodbine's  turned  so  far — it,  and  the  sumach. 
There's  some  sumach  over  there." 

He  pointed  out  a  cluster  of  the  man-high,  scarlet 
bushes  in  a  field  that  slanted  upward  at  their  right. 
Dark  green  pines  made  a  background  for  the  gleaming 
mass.  Clotilde  paused  to  look.  "  That's  good  stuff !  " 
she  said,  technically.  "  With  those  pines — I'd  like  to  try 
to  paint  it — if  I  weren't  so  busy  with  other  things." 
She  stopped  to  look  over  the  suggested  subjects. 
"  Other  things  are  a  bore  this  afternoon — rather,"  she 
confessed. 

Skeeter,  given  a  chance  because  she  was  turned 
more  than  half  from  him,  looked  at  her  intently.  He 
did  not  devour  her  with  his  eyes,  nor  did  any  of  him 
suggest  devouring;  he  admired,  he  worshiped,  he 
coveted.  But  it  was  a  hopeless  sort  of  coveting; 
so  he  had  once  stood  among  many  and  worshiped  and 
coveted  the  airplane  of  an  exhibition  flier  at  the  Onteora 
Fair.  It  had  been  hauled  away,  almost  at  once,  to  be 
shut  from  prying  eyes  in  a  barn;  and  Clotilde,  he  would 
be  losing  her  in  a  few  minutes,  now.  The  Brooks'  lower 
pasture,  specified  by  Mr.  Hooghtyling,  was  less  than  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  further  on.  He  would  have  to  leave 
her  there,  and  go  back  to  a  singularly  drab  existence. 
Driving  that  old  wreck  of  a  stage,  those  two  old  wrecks 
of  worn-out  nags!  If  only  he  could  go  to  something 
more  worthy — to  driving  a  motor-bus — or,  better,  into 


130  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  pomp  and  panoply  of  war!  Merely  looking  at  her 
strengthened  all  his  ideals. 

"  I  will  paint  that — just  as  soon  as  things  settle  down 
a  little!"  Clotilde  promised  herself,  remembering  her 
sometimes  interesting  handicraft.  "  It's  full  of  meaning 
— those  dark  pines,  and  the  flaming  scarlet  bushes — if  I 
could  put  a  girl  in  there,  a  girl  with  something  of  the 
same  combination  of  colors  in  her  soul — "  She  thought 
of  Helen  Hope.  Or  she  might  put  in  a  clump  of  white 
birches,  like  slim  white  naked  maidens  of  the  wood — 
with  the  scarlet  bushes  flaming  passion  at  their  feet — 
the  dark  pines  glooming  doom  beyond — 

"  I  don't  see — Mr.  Hooghtyling  nowhere,"  Skeeter 
announced,  a  little  short  of  breath;  he,  also,  had  been 
doing  some  thinking.  The  wary  cleverness  of  a  young- 
fox  was  in  him,  combined,  heterogeneously  active,  along 
with  the  wisdom  of  his  vast  simplicity. 

Clotilde  was  diverted :  "  Oh,  was  this  the  place  where 
he  was  to  be?  " 

Skeeter  skilfully  avoided  the  gin  of  a  lie  direct. 
"  I  don't  see  him,"  repeated  Skeeter,  looking  hard  at 
several  places  where  Henry  might  have  been  expected 
not  to  be.  "  Maybe  he  hasn't  come  yet — maybe  we 
could  go  up  there  and  wait  for  him?  " 

"  Yes — let's,"  agreed  Clotilde,  pleasantly  undisap- 
pointed,  it  seemed  to  Skeeter,  by  Henry's  absence. 
He  helped  her  over  the  gray-brown  remnants  of  a  stone 
wall  that  had  been  upstanding  and  important  when  it 
enclosed  a  wheat  field,  some  generations  before,  and  they 
straggled  up  the  hillside  toward  the  sumachs  and  pines. 
"  Perhaps  we  came  too  slowly — perhaps  he's  given  up 
and  gone  home  ?  "  suggested  Clotilde.  They  had  come 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  131 

slowly,  partly  because  of  her  high-heeled  slippers;  she 
hadn't  stopped  to  change  those  blue  kid  morning  delica 
cies  for  more  substantial  gear. 

"  He  said  till  round  four  o'clock — or  maybe  it  was  at 
four  o'clock,"  Skeeter  reassured  her.  "  I  don't  en 
tirely  remember." 

"  Well,  either  way,  then,  we  shan't  miss  him,"  she 
returned,  and  threw  herself  down  on  the  short,  gray- 
green  herbage  near  the  sumachs,  a  hundred  yards  from 
the  old  road  and  a  hundred  feet  above  it.  The  valley 
spread  southwestward  before  them,  variegated,  gleaming, 
simmering  in  amber  sunlight,  wonderful.  Skeeter 
dropped  down  some  ten  feet  from  her  and  embraced  his 
knees  with  his  arms;  he  had  been  at  picnics  in  company 
with  girls,  though  never  with  such  a  girl  as  this,  and 
he  adopted  the  conventional  attitude. 

"Do  you  know  many  of  the  artists  around  here?" 
asked  Clotilde,  after  a  few  minutes  of  silence.  It  seemed 
proper  to  ask  something. 

"  No.  That  is,  they  nod  to  me,  and  sometimes  they 
talk  to  me  when  I'm  drivin'  'em  in  or  out;  but  I  don't 
s'pose  you'd  call  that  knowin'  'em,"  said  Skeeter. 

"  Oh,  that's  about  as  well  as  most  people  know  each 
other,  I  fancy,"  Clotilde  commented.  Her  toes  were 
compressed  by  walking  in  her  pumps;  Skeeter  was 
looking  out  over  the  Valley.  She  slipped  the  pumps  off, 
and  wiggled  her  toes  in  the  freedom  that  they  joined  the 
rest  of  her  in  enjoying.  They  were  well-trained,  Mod 
ernistic,  freedom-loving  toes,  for  all  they  sometimes  had 
to  endure  the  prisoning  of  pumps.  Lessons  in  the  latest 
forms  of  barefoot  dancing  had  trained  them,  together 
with  her  whole  lithe  body,  in  being  proper  Modern 


132  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

members.  She  glanced  at  Skeeter.  How  completely 
horrified  and  dumbfounded  he  would  be  if  he  could  be 
present  at  some  of  the  lawn  dances,  performed  by  schools 
of  barefooted,  nymphishly  underclad  nymphs,  so  popu 
lar  in  Westchester  and  Long  Island!  He  was  a  fine 
young  barbarian,  fresh  from  the  fringes  of  civilization, 
a  true  and  delightful  "  native." 

She  said,  prying  at  his  undoubtedly  barbarous  sar 
torial  opinions :  "  Some  of  the  artists  wear  queer  clothes 
up  here,  don't  they?  " 

Skeeter,  grinning  a  little,  agreed :  "  They  sure  do — 
and  they  get  worse  every  year !  " 

"  How  worse?  " 

"  Oh — every  way." 

"  You  don't  mean  they're  not  all — perfectly  modest?  " 

He  didn't  seem  to  get  that.    "  Well — "  he  hesitated. 

"  I  mean  they  all  wear  enough  clothes  ?  "  she  explained. 

"Well — yes,  and  no."  He  didn't  look  enlightened; 
his  hesitation,  Clotilde  recognized,  might  have  been  be 
cause  a  question  of  modesty  was  involved. 

"No?"  said  Clotilde. 

"No,"  said  Skeeter,  staring  at  the  landscape,  dis 
approving  as  a  proper  young  monk. 

She  was  altogether  pleasantly  amused,  diverted: 
"Well,  how  much  clothes  ought  a  person  to  wear?" 

"  They  ought  to  wear  somethin' ! " 

That  was  sufficiently  prompt  and  to  the  point.  "  But, 
of  course,"  objected  Clotilde,  "  they  all  do!  " 

"  No.     Some  of  'em  don't  wear  nawthiri !  " 

"  Oh,  come !  You  don't  mean  that !  "  She  had  heard 
wild  tales  of  the  Woodbridge  art  colony,  but  nothing 
quite  so  wild  as  that. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  133 

"  Yes,  I  do,"  insisted  Skeeter  quietly.  "  Over  in 
the  woods  'round  Willowville,  they  go  that  way.  Girls 
and  women." 

"Oh,  the  Plein  Air  Fellowship,  of  course!"  She 
laughed.  She  had  forgotten  that  association  of  artists 
whose  announced  program  was  "  The  painting  of  the 
nude  in  the  open  air."  "  But  they're  artists — and  it's 
only  the  models  who  go  au  naturel." 

Skeeter  commented  grimly :  "  Yes — they  go  natural,  all 
right." 

"  But  they're  models — and,  anyway,  are  all  natural 
things  ugly,  bad?"  protested  Clotilde;  she  was  both 
amused,  and  anxious  to  get  at  native  views.  ;<  You 
don't  think  all  natural  things  are  wrong,  do  you  ?  " 

"  Most  of  'em." 

"None  of  them!" 

Glum  Puritanism  confronted  exhilarated  Modernism. 
"  '  Nothing  that  is  according  to  nature  is  wrong,'  "  quoted 
exhilarated  Modernism.  "  There,  one  of  the  wisest  men 
that  ever  lived  said  that !  " 

"  I  don't  care  who  said — "  Skeeter  reformed  his 
manners.  "  Maybe  I  don't  just  get  you — you  mean  a 
fellow  had  ought  to  do  just  what's  natural  for  him — 
what  he  wants  to  ?  " 

"  Yes,  just  that.    But,  of  course—" 

"  Then  I  don't  take  no  stock  into  it,"  said  Skeeter. 

Clotilde  laughed  outright.  She  took  off  her  big  hat, 
stuck  her  two  turquoise-set  hatpins  straight  up  in  the 
crown  like  artificial  flowers,  and  smoothed  her  heavy  dark 
hair  back  from  her  temples,  still  chuckling.  A  middle- 
aged  lady  artist,  passing  along  the  road  from  luncheon 
in  the  log  cabin  of  a  hermit,  M.  A.  of  Harvard  twenty 


134  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

years  ago  and  now  an  unsuccessful  symbolist  painter,  on 
her  way  to  tea  at  the  country  mansion  of  a  retired  real 
estate  operator  and  millionaire,  glanced  up,  saw  them,  and 
envied  them ;  but  they  neither  saw  nor  envied  her. 

Clotilde  explained :  "  First,  we  must  recognize  the  truth 
about  things;  then,  if  we're  natural,  we'll  want  to  do  the 
right,  true  thing."  The  somewhat  trite  formulas  gained 
freshness  from  the  freshness  of  the  person  to  whom  they 
were  introduced.  "  If  we  really  understand  a  thing,  we'll 
want  to  do  what  is  right." 

"  That  ain't  so  bad."  Skeeter  mulled  it  over,  and 
improved  on  her  statement:  "Of  course  a  feller'd  still 
want  to  do  things  he  hadn't  ought,  btft  he'd  want  to  not 
do  'em  more,  seein'  what  might  happen  if  he  did.  Yes, 
the  way  you  explain  it,  I  guess  I  believe  into  it.  But 
sometimes — "  There  was  all  the  sudden  melancholy  of 
youth,  of  star-hungry,  stone- fed  youth,  in  his  face  and 
voice;  he  looked  at  her  with  half-vacant,  half-yearning 
eyes,  forgetting  himself  in  the  look  of  her.  "  But  just 
sometimes  he'd  have  a  hard  time  decidin' — if  he  was  let 
do  just  what  he  wanted." 

His  look  lodged  somewhere  near  her  heart,  and  she 
turned  away,  troubled,  perplexed;  it  had  come  to  her 
before,  that  yearning  hopelessness  in  a  boy's  eyes,  that 
yearning  for  something  beyond  price  that  she  might  have 
given  if  she  would,  but  it  had  never  come  quite  so  hope 
lessly,  so  devotionally.  She  asked  herself  an  ancient  and 
familiar  question,  ancient  and  familiar,  at  least,  to  women 
both  thoughtful  and  beautiful :  who  was  she  to  hold  in 
her  two  white  hands  such  gifts  of  pain  and  happiness  for 
the  least  of  human  creatures — why  was  the  choice  nearly 
always  determined  for  her  in  advance  that  she  should 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  135 

hold  out  the  pain  in  her  left  hand,  withholding  the 
jeweled  happiness  in  her  right,  guarding  it  instinctively, 
perhaps  without  rhyme  or  reason,  as  a  miserable  miser 
guards  the  gold  he  could  make  of  use  to  himself  and 
others  only  by  spending? 

She  must  withhold  the  happiness,  said  one  authority, 
to  prptect  herself:  children!  But  Modernity  had  re 
arranged  that.  She  must  withhold  because  of  morality, 
precedent,  religion,  said  others :  but  these  were  even  staler 
formulas  than  the  new  ones  that  Modernity  was  helping 
to  make  stale  as  fast  as  it  could.  She  fell  back  on  a 
formula  that  had  served  her  as  it  had  served  many  an 
other  Modern  Damsel:  the  inevitable  demand  was  not 
there.  She  could  not  yield  her  greatest  gift,  according 
to  this  school,  until  the  inevitable,  necessary  occasion 
when,  by  the  harmonizing  of  her  will  with  the  will  of 
the  man  craving  her  gift  of  love,  happiness  might  come 
at  its  purest  and  highest,  its  topmost  toss  of  perfection, 
both  for  them  and  for  the  race. 

Back  of  all  the  formulas,  back  of  the  urgent  will 
toward  withholding,  she  wondered,  was  there  not  some 
wellspring  of  simple  human  dignity,  some  necessity  for 
her  own  spirit  to  choose  its  moment,  in  that  as  in  other 
things,  unforced,  unhampered,  free? 

Mating,  with  her,  would  never  be  the  result  of  forcing, 
either  with  the  weapons  of  pleading  or  of  forthright 
assault  of  the  Carey  Beemis  variety.  The  days  of  carry 
ing  the  hearts  of  women  of  her  type  by  siege  and  con 
quest  had  passed — if  they  ever  really  existed :  or  if, 
through  a  succession  of  assaults,  her  defenses  were 
leveled,  she  was  led  forth  captive  in  the  good  old  way, 
not  only  herself,  but  her  conqueror,  and  society,  would 


136  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

rue  the  day !  Co-operation  would  take  the  place  of  brute 
force  in  making  the  supreme  decision  of  her  life,  if  she 
had  anything  to  say  about  it.  She  would  go  to  meet  her 
lover,  conduct  him  proudly  and  freely  within  her  gates; 
she  would  not  receive  him  cowering  and  fearful  behind 
her  leveled  walls.  Let  but  the  right  man  show  and  iden 
tify  himself,  and  he  would  have  a  right  royal  welcome. 

Therefore  she  was  .quite  certain  of  herself,  as  any 
less  Modern  girl  of  her  station  would  have  been,  in  the 
matter  of  her  youthful  cavalier's  devotion;  and  her 
acquaintance  with  a  few  basic  facts  of  the  situation  gave 
her  a  background  and  a  surety  that  a  less  Modern  miss 
might  have  lacked.  She  was  not  endangered  by  igno 
rance,  at  least,  by  girlish  ignorance  that  permitted  the 
tantalization  of  every  youth  in  sight,  and  resulted  in  her 
own  tantalization  most  of  all.  She  despised  those  kit 
tenish  feminine  invitations  to  break  a  lance  on  the  shield 
of  a  titillated  heart,  invitations  sent  broadcast,  and  with 
no  lack  of  resultant  excitement,  by  all  the  arts  of  prim 
little  minxes  of  bygone  generations.  Of  course  the 
minxes  would  linger,  along  with  other  devoluting  types, 
to  the  end  of  a  civilization  always  enriched,  when  not 
clogged,  by  remnants ;  but,  at  least,  at  the  moment,  minxes 
were  not  au  fait. 

Clotilde  faced  a  choice  of  evils  in  dealing  with  the 
common  problem  raised  by  Skeeter.  She  might  keep 
the  conversation  on  cooler  topics,  she  might  send  him 
about  his  business,  or  she  might  take  up  the  subject  near 
and  dear  to  his  heart,  and  explain  just  why  he  shouldn't 
want  her.  She  knew  enough  of  boys  sent  off  to  dis 
sipation  by  girls  who  played  with  their  callow  emotions; 
the  good  old  threat  and  practice  of  drowning  one's  love- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  137 

sorrows  in  drink  had  been  expanded,  and  made  more 
specific,  by  the  franker  spirit  of  the  times.  Clotilde  felt 
a  certain  responsibility  for  Skeeter,  in  spite  of  the 
part  that  pure  accident,  including  a  blackberry  sucker 
that  ought  to  have  been  trimmed  in  August,  had  played 
in  their  relations. 

During  some  minutes  of  serious  thought,  she  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  she  ought  to  talk  frankly  to  Skeeter. 
At  the  end  of  that  time,  she  was  a  serious  and  sober 
young  lady.  She  looked  back,  with  a  kind  of  horror,  on 
her  tendency  to  rally  Skeeter,  to  lead  him  on,  using 
him  to  tickle  her  own  vanity  and  far  from  dormant 
amatory  instincts.  So  her  mother  might  have  felt  and 
done,  in  days  long  past,  and  perhaps  less  fortunate  in  the 
transpiring  than  in  one,  at  least,  of  the  results. 

She  looked  up  at  him,  clear-eyed,  thoughtful,  consider 
ate.  He  was  dumbly  adoring  her  over  his  arm-clasped 
knees.  He  had  been  doing  that,  and  nothing  else,  for  the 
past  five  minutes. 

"  James,"  she  said,  "  I  want  to  talk  seriously,  frankly 
with  you — may  I?  "  She  reminded  herself  that  she  had 
prefaced  some  remarks  to  Henry  Hooghtyling  with 
almost  the  same  words;  she  had  been  a  little  too  frank, 
open,  and  flat  with  Henry,  she  suspected,  now, 
and  was  ready  to  temper  pure  truth  for  Skeeter's 
benefit. 

Skeeter  seemed  to  be  somewhat  lethargic,  perhaps 
with  misery.  "  Thought  we'd  been  talkin'  pretty  seri 
ous?  "  he  suggested;  and  added:  "  Never  knew  any  girl 
to  talk  serious — except  you." 

"  But  I'm  not  a  girl,  James,"  she  took  him  up,  granted 
an  excellent  opening;  "  I'm  a  grown  woman — nearly 


138  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

twenty-five  years  old — more  than  six  years  older  than 
you  are.  So  I  want  to  talk  to  you  like  an  older 
person — " 

"  Ev'ybody  says  I'm  beyont  my  years,"  he  interrupted. 

"  Well,  so  am  I !  "  she  countered.  "  I'm  enough  older 
than  my  years  to  make — " 

"  You  don't  look  more'n  sixteen,  or  seventeen,"  said 
Skeeter. 

"  No,  and  I  suppose  I  don't  act  any  older,  much  of  the 
time;  but  now  I  want  to  act  as  if  I'd  reached  years  of 
discretion,  at  least;  and  I  want  to  say  that  I'm  afraid, 
without  meaning  to,  I've — got  you  a  little  bit  stirred 
up — isn't  that  true?"  She  smiled  at  him  with  easy 
friendliness. 

"  Stirred  up  ?  "  he  repeated,  abruptly  on  his  guard. 

"  Oh,  you  know  how  a  girl — how  pure  accidents  will 
sometimes  stir  a  fellow  up.  It  happened  that  I  rode  with 
you  as  far  as  the  barn,  and  talked  with  you — and  you 
noticed  me.  Then  Mr.  Hooghtyling  happened  to  send 
you  up  to  see  me — and  there  was  that  accident  on  the 
road — You  see,  it  was  a  series  of  accidents — my  being 
here  alone  with  you  on  this  hillside  is  another  accident." 
If  Skeeter  recognized  that  as  a  clever  piece  of  design, 
he  said  nothing.  "  And,  as  a  result  of  all  these  acci 
dents,  I'm  afraid  I've  stirred  you  up  quite  some.  You 
see,  I  know  a  good  deal  about  boys — perhaps  more  than 
you'd  think!" 

Skeeter  admitted :  "  Yes — you  did — stir  me  up — 
a  little."  He  looked  foolish  as  he  said  it,  and  on  his 
guard,  as  if  he  expected  a  typical  ripost  of  feminine 
raillery. 

"Thank  you  for  being  frank  with  me,"  said  Clotilde; 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  139 

she  felt  a  renewed  and  pleasant  faith  in  rural  human 
nature.  "  As  I  was  just  saying  to  you,  if  people  only 
understand  the  truth,  and  frankly  admit  it,  both  to  them 
selves  and  others,  they'll  do  the  right  thing.  So  I  thought 
that,  if  we'd  both  just  admit  that  a  series  of  accidents 
had  made  you  sort  of — well,  take  a  shine  to  me — we'd  get 
on  much  better." 

She  didn't  know  where  she'd  got  "  shine " ;  it  had 
come  out  of  some  rag-bag  of  her  memory.  It  seemed  to 
fit  Skeeter's  mood.  "  Yes,  I  did  sort  of  take  a  shine 
to  you ! "  he  said,  smiling,  turned  candid  as  the  early 
autumn  day. 

"  I  think  it's  better  just  to  admit  such  things — " 

"So  do  I!"  agreed  Skeeter;  he  beamed  at  her,  all 
necessity  for  secrecy  having  been  removed,  fairly  intoxi 
cated  with  the  frankness  that  she  had  introduced  and 
recommended.  "  I've  got  a  shine  on  you  that's  a 
wonder! "  It  seemed  to  do  him  a  world  of  good  to 
say  it. 

"Well,"  resumed  Clotilde,  slightly  dashed;  "then  I 
think  we  will  both  agree — "  Drawing  the  necessary  and 
obvious  conclusions  seemed  harder.  "  We  will  both 
agree — "  She  stuck  again,  and  then  plunged  somewhat 
awkwardly  ahead :  "  That  neither  of  us  is  going  to  make 
the  other  miserable  by — by  considering  that  shine  more 
than  it  is — but  by  just  forgetting  it,  and  being  good 
friends.  Don't  you  agree  with  me  ?  " 

After  a  moment's  absorption  of  this  anti-climax, 
Skeeter  said,  "Oh,  sure,"  and  glanced  at  her;  sodden 
pain  had  flooded  up  into  his  eyes.  With  a  scowl  for  his 
own  misery  and  weakness,  he  turned  away.  He  was  no 
ascetic :  renunciation  was  not  sweet. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Fm  awfully  sorry,  James,"  she  said,  genuinely  moved. 

"  Sure — it  can't  be  helped — I  had  no  business  to  go 
raisin'  my  eyes  to  you,"  he  growled,  all  the  light  gone 
out  of  his  face  and  voice. 

"  But  I'm  so  much  older  than  you  are,  James!  " 

"  Don't  I  know,  'tain't  that?" 

Should  she  end  it,  send  him  away?  But  she  didn't 
want  him  to  go  away  in  the  almost  reckless  despondency 
that  had  settled  upon  him.  Better  she  had  never  spoken 
than  that.  She  could  fancy  him  getting  drunk,  sneaking 
into  infinitely  worse  and  more  dangerous  dissipations. 
If  he  did,  she  would  have  had  a  hand  in  sullying  all 
love  for  him,  in  making  a  bawdy,  bedraggled,  dirty  thing 
of  the  pure  emotion  his  love  for  her  had  been — and  was. 
He  was  a  Celt,  in  spite  of  his  disowned  Irish  race;  he 
would  love  with  the  romantic  fervor  of  a  Celt  and 
degrade  his  love  with  Celtic  thoroughness  if  it  met  no 
response.  "  The  trouble  with  the  Irish,"  Clotilde  groaned 
inwardly,  "  is  that  they  can't  stand  a  little  healthy  ad 
versity."  But  the  fact  that  he  was  Irish,  she  knew, 
merely  intensified  his  tendency  to  react  as  she  suspected 
he  would.  She  had  known  boys  much  like  him;  she 
had  seen  them  sitting  before  her  in  much  Skeeter's 
state,  with  much  his  excuse. 

After  all,  what  right  had  they  to  bring  their  undesired 
love  to  her,  to  grow  despondent,  even  if  they  didn't  sneer 
at  her  and  curse  her,  when  she  admitted  she  had  no  use 
for  their  present?  Sudden  exasperation  filled  her.  "  I 
hoped,  James,  that  you'd  take  it  in  a  more  manly  way," 
she  said,  trying  to  conceal  her  exasperation,  and  suc 
ceeding  in  surprising  herself  by  her  tone  of  moralistic 
cheapness. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  141 

"  Sure — I  know  I'd  ought  to."  He  rose,  outwardly 
calm,  but  his  inward  state  of  active  disdain  for  the 
moralizer  stuck  out  on  him  like  a  sore  thumb.  He 
looked  at  his  watch,  ostentatiously  preparing  to  take 
his  departure.  Another  youth,  a  gilded  one  of  New 
York  and  Westchester,  had  showered  her  with  curses 
and  vile  names  under  almost  identical  circumstances. 
Skeeter's  acceptance  of  his  turn-down  showed  up  well 
by  comparison  with  that  affair,  at  least.  Nevertheless, 
she  had  a  shuddery  feeling  that  he  was  thinking 
something  of  what  the  franker  youth  had  put  into 
words. 

"  Sit  down  again,  please,  James,"  she  said;  "  I  don't 
want  you  to  go  away  feeling  as  you  do.  Let's  talk  a 
little  more." 

Skeeter  sat  down,  far  from  hopefully. 

"  Let's  look  at  the  truth  about  all  this — at  its  possible 
consequences  for  both  of  us,"  said  Clotilde,  pulling  her 
skirts  as  far  down  over  her  ankles  as  they  would  go;  she 
had  put  her  pumps  on  some  time  before,  and  was  pre 
pared  to  be  false  to  nature,  her  own  and  girl-nature  in 
general,  to  the  extent  of  appearing  quite  a  prude. 

"  You  want  to  make  love  to  me,  don't  you  ?  Well, 
let's  suppose  you  did?  " 

The  supposition  took  Skeeter's  breath;  he  became 
quite  gawky  and  pale.  "  Well — s'pose  ?  "  he  repeated, 
struggling  for  frank  self-possession  to  match  her 
own. 

"  You'd  begin  by  holding  my  hand — then  you'd  want 
to  put  your  arm  around  my  waist — soon  you'd  want  to 
kiss  me."  Clotilde  proceeded  with  the  inevitable  truth, 
judiciously,  calmly,  with  a  strain  of  contempt  that 


142  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

reduced,  if  it  did  not  remove,  the  headiness  of  her 
narrative.  "  Soon  kissing,  even,  wouldn't  satisfy  you. 
Remember,  we're  facing  the  whole  truth,  James !  Soon 
you'd  want  more,  much  more,  than  kissing — " 

"  No — no ! ''  choked  Skeeter,  appalled  by  her  hint 
of  "  ruining  a  pure  girl,"  a  custom  held  in  high  disrepute 
among  Woodbridgians,  in  spite  of  its  occasional  practice. 
Skeeter  was  quite  panicky. 

Clotilde  was  glad  of  the  effect  produced  by  pure  truth. 
"  Oh,  yes,  you  would !  "  she  declared  inexorably,  "  and 
you  know  it !  "  She  struggled  with  a  mighty  temptation 
to  call  a  spade  a  spade  and  jab  him  with  it.  A  good  jab 
with  a  good,  solid,  truthful  spade  might  do  him  no  end 
of  good.  "  Please — no — you  got  me  all  wrong!  "  pleaded 
Skeeter,  recognizing  his  danger,  horrified  as  if  he 
faced  a  firing  squad. 

Skeeter  showed  the  blank  dismay  of  a  man  whom 
star-gazing  has  recently  deposited  at  the  bottom  of  a  pit. 
"  I  never  thought  of  it — like  that,"  he  admitted,  without 
daring  to  look  at  her.  "  I  didn't  mean  nothing  like 
that!" 

"  No — that's  just  the  trouble — the  world  is  carefully 
arranged  to  keep  that  sort  of  truth  from  those  who  need 
it  most ! "  She  was  victorious.  "  We  need  only  to 
know  the  truth  about  these  things,  to  really  understand 
them — and  we'll  do  the  right  thing!  It  isn't  a  lot  of 
old-fashioned  moral  maxims  we  need — it's  just  plain 
modern  truth!  Now — isn't  everything  settled?  I  hope 
you'll  agree  with  me  that  it  is !  " 

For  the  space  of  ten  seconds  it  seemed  to  be  settled. 
At  the  end  of  that  time,  Skeeter  ventured :  "  But  you 
got  me  all  wrong — like  I  said  back  there.  Of  course 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  143 

there  couldn't  be  anything  into  it.  But,  seein's  we're 
bein'  so  frank,  and  all  that,  I  was  just  thinking — "  He 
paused,  his  face  a  strange  mixture  of  dull  hopelessness 
and  struggling  hope. 

"  Yes — what  were  you  thinking?  "  she  encouraged  him 
gently. 

"  Well,  of  course  they  couldn't  be  nothing  into  it." 
He  affected  an  unconcern  that  did  away  both  with  the 
hopelessness  and  the  hope.  "  But  I  was  just  thinkin',  I 
mean — you  didn't  git  me  right.  O'  course,  I  mean,  you 
didn't  mention  I  might — might  sorta — ask  you  to  marry 
me.  Of  course  they  couldn't  be  nothin'  into  it:  but  I 
was  just  thinkin'." 

The  appearance  of  this  small,  neglected  truth  exas 
perated  Clotilde;  things  had  been  going  so  swim 
mingly  ! 

"  But,  my  dear  boy,  I'm  six  or  seven  years  older  than 
you  are !  " 

"  Well,  that  ain't  the  real  reason — if  we're  just  talkin' 
'bout  things  as  they  really  are.  Look  at  Hype  Vreeden- 
dorf  and  his  wife — and  Ethel  Hooghtyling's  seven  years 
older'n  Henry.  Now,  o'  course,  I  know  it  can't  happen ; 
but  I  guess  we  got  to  admit  it  ain't  the  ages  keeps  it 
from  happenin'." 

There  was  sufficient  truth  in  this  to  drive  Clotilde  to 
other  grounds. 

"  But — "  regretfully.  "  James,  I  don't  love  you — 
and  you  don't  really  love  me.  You've  only  got  a  little 
'  shine'  on  me,  you  know." 

He  disregarded  the  dimension  of  the  "  shine  "  he  had 
on  her.  "  Sure  you  don't,"  he  admitted.  "  I  ain't  worth 
it.  I  ain't  nothin'  much.  But  s'pose — just  s'pose  to  be 


144  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

s'posin' — I  got  an  education — and  went  into  the  army — 
and  got  famous — " 

She  interrupted,  both  exasperated  and  distressed: 
"  Oh,  James — it's  impossible!  " 

"  Sure — that's  what  I  said — but  we  was  just  try  in' 
to  git  down  to  the  bed-rock  of  the  old  road,  wasn't  we? 
I  knew  they  couldn't  be  nawthin'  into  it." 

He  was  rather  harder,  glummer,  more  desperate-look 
ing  than  he  had  been  when  they  arrived  at  their  previous 
impasses — all  of  which  were  distinguished  by  the  inescap 
able  fact  that  he  couldn't  have  her.  That  was  the  bed 
rock  of  truth  to  which  his  own  and  Clotilde's  exposition 
of  truth  led  them — he  couldn't  have  her.  Also,  to  him, 
there  was  no  inevitable  demand  that  he  relinquish  her. 
Inevitable  demand  played  a  part  in  his  scheme  of  things, 
as  well  as  in  hers. 

Clotilde  searched,  in  some  distress  of  mind,  for  further 
truths,  for  the  truth  that  would  make  him  want  to  do 
the  right  thing  according  to  her  interpretation  of  right, 
that  would  send  him  from  her  gladdened,  ennobled,  with 
unsullied  ideals  of  love  and  womanhood,  not  despondent 
to  the  verge  of  suicide,  or  other  excesses.  No  fur 
ther  truths  appeared;  she  seemed  to  have  covered  the 
case. 

She  was  more  than  sorry;  verily,  her  belief  in  the 
panaceatic  effect  of  pure,  unadulterated  truth  was  shaken. 
Moved  by  the  disastrous  messes  she  had  made  of  sup 
pressing  several  boyish  crushes  in  earlier  years,  she  had 
thought  the  problem  out,  as  befitted  a  modern  damsel. 
It  had  been  her  solid  conclusion  that  a  complete  and 
truthful  presentation  of  the  case  to  any  thoughtful,  clean- 
minded,  really  manly  boy  would  send  him  on  his  way 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  145 

rejoicing.  Skeeter  answered  the  description  of  thought 
ful,  clean-minded,  manly,  she  had  mixed  the  truthful  in 
gredients  according  to  formula,  and  yet  the  result  was 
not  as  anticipated. 

"  Damn  it  all!  "  she  muttered  under  her  breath.  Was 
he  going  from  her  as  glum,  disheartened,  hardened,  des 
perate  as  if  she  had  dismissed  him  in  the  old-fashioned, 
flippant,  untruthful  way?  Was  there  no  way  of  making 
a  boy,  a  worth-while,  honest,  manly  boy,  get  over  an 
attack  of  calf-love  without  endangering  the  fabric  of 
Modern  idealism,  without  making  him  more  or  less  of 
a  menace  to  himself  and  society  at  large  ? 

There  seemed  not  to  be. 

Or,  yes,  there  might  be — one  way. 

She  remembered  a  post-prandial  argument  at  the  table 
of  the  Heterodoxy,  a  Modernistic  woman's  club  to  which 
she  gave  spasmodic  allegiance.  A  treatment  for  calf 
love  had  been  recommended  by  a  flirtatious,  un-Modern 
miss.  "  When  things  have  gone  too  far,  I  tell  them  I'm 
engaged — it  usually  works  beautifully — when  they  be 
lieve  it,"  said  this  exponent  of  archaic  feminine  wiles. 

Well — Skeeter  would  undoubtedly  believe  it. 

But — should  she  descend  to  a  lie,  a  thrice  damned  and 
un-Modern  lie,  she,  Modern  Truth's  devoted  disciple? 

At  least  Truth  might  be  served  by  putting  the  matter 
to  test.  She  was  very  Modern.  Truth,  she  ruminated, 
in  its  larger  aspects,  might  be  served  even  by  a  damned 
lie. 

"James,"  she  said,  compressing  her  lips  after  the 
word :  "  James,  I've  told  you  the  whole  truth,  and  you've 
understood — but  you  seem  to  need  more." 

She  was  ironically  pleased  with  her  introduction. 


146  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  No— I  guess  I  don't  need  no  more — I  guess — "  he 
began  recklessly. 

She  interrupted :  "  So  I  shall  have  to  tell  you  that  I'm 
engaged — engaged  to  be  married.  Perhaps  I  should  have 
told  you  that  before — but  I  thought,  if  I  showed  you  the 
plain  truth  about  your  feeling  for  me,  that  would  be 
enough." 

The  effect  on  Skeeter  was  immediate,  electric. 
"  Oh-oh-oh !  "  The  interjection  was  a  long-drawn  gasp 
of  surprise  and  relief,  distinctly  of  relief.  "  Well — now 
— o'  course — "  Apologetic  regret  entered  the  melange 
of  his  emotions,  rapidly  became  the  dominant  motive. 
"  I  didn't  know  that,  or  I  wouldn't — I — Say,  I  hope  you'll 
not  think — "  He  was  broken  up  with  apologetic  con 
trition.  Engagements  still  had  something  of  the  sanctity 
of  marriages  in  old-fashioned  Woodbridge.  If  she  had 
abruptly  confessed  pregnancy  to  a  modern  metropolitan 
youth  she  could  not  have  produced  a  more  shattering 
effect.  Skeeter  got  up,  hat  in  hand,  glanced  around 
wildly,  prepared  to  fly  her  presence. 

"  I  tried  to  be  frank  with  you,  James,"  she  said,  rising 
also,  amazed  by  the  effect  of  a  simple  little  lie  where  so 
much  pure  truth  had  been  worse  than  wasted. 

"  Sure — my  mistake ! "  He  chuckled  foolishly, 
blushed  foolishly,  foolishly  pulled  at  his  forelock;  there 
was  something  at  once  important  and  very,  very  foolish 
about  an  engagement.  However,  he  forgot  the  foolish 
ness,  rose  to  sudden  frankness  and  respect,  as  he  looked 
at  her  serious  face. 

"  You  been  fine — yes,  you  been  frank — I've  learned  a 
lot  from  what  you've  told  me !  "  Clotilde's  respect  for 
the  truth  returned  a  little ;  perhaps  the  truth  hadn't  been 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  147 

altogether  wasted  after  all.  "  I'm  glad  if  anything  I've 
said — "  she  began. 

"  I  guess  it  has!  A  fellow  never  thinks  about  some 
things  without  somebody  tells  him!  Believe  me,  I'm 
grateful  to  you ! "  He  wagged  his  head  sidewise  with 
intense  conviction.  "  Say,  you'll  just  forget  how  I — 
not  knowin' — took  on?"  He  sagged  with  self-depre 
ciation. 

"  I  certainly  will — I  don't  blame  you  one  bit,  James." 
She  held  out  her  hand;  he  accepted  it  devotionally,  and 
released  it  quickly,  remembering  that  it  was  another 
man's  property.  The  Biblical  virtues  were  strong  in 
him :  he  could  not  have  coveted  another  man's  wife,  nor 
his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  his  fiancee,  even  if  the  more 
terrible  prohibition  against  adultery  had  not  played  a 
part  in  the  tangle  of  his  thoughts  and  emotions.  "  If 
you'd  only  told  me  before!  "  he  apologized. 

"  No,  you  didn't  have  no  call  to  tell  me  before,"  he 
hurried  on,  answering  for  her.  "  Besides,  then,  you 
wouldn't  have  told  me — some  things — you  did.  I — I 
feel  better  for  knowin'  you — for  talkin' — "  He  was  try 
ing  to  express  the  rise  in  his  idealism  that  Clotilde  had 
hoped  her  truth  would  bring  him.  "  I'll  think  of  you 
when  I'm  in  the  army — when  I  git  in  a  tight  hole !  "  he 
told  her  abruptly,  putting  his  feeling  for  her  into  concrete 
and  forceful  illustration. 

She  gasped :  the  nobility,  the  idealism,  demanded  both 
by  her  Modernism  and  her  woman's  instincts,  had  flow 
ered  into  fighting  proclivities!  He  paused  in  the  act  of 
turning  away,  gaping  at  the  look  of  near-horror  that  over 
spread  her  face.  "  Oh — but  I  don't  believe  in  war — you 
won't  enlist,  James — if  you  really  want  to  please  me  1 " 


148  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

she  stammered,  and  grew  more  resolute :  "  If  I  have  any 
influence  with  you,  let  me  urge  you,  as  a  last  request, 
not  to  enlist :  at  least  to  wait  another  six  months !  Will 
you?" 

His  acceptance  of  that  was  downright  insulting:  it 
amused  him,  he  tittered,  a  somewhat  condescending, 
highly  superior  masculine  titter,  and  rallied  her :  "  Oh, 
that's  the  way  all  you  women  talk — you  ain't  used  to 
fightin' — but  I  guess  if  I  do  anything  to  get  a  medal — • 
you  won't  be  so  sorry ! "  He  got  out  his  watch  again, 
still  tittering,  but  turning  his  mind  to  more  important 
matters  than  feminine  timidity  and  whims.  "  I  got  to 
hit  the  road,  now — but,  say,  Mr.  Hooghtyling — I'll  just 
run  up  the  road  a  little,  and  see  if  I  can  spy  him,  and 
tell  him  you're  here!  Well — "  He  waved  an  affable 
hand  at  her,  beginning  to  back,  still  with  condescending 
amusement  for  her  war-feelings,  down  the  hill.  "  I'll 
send  you  a  post-card  from  France !  So  long !  " 

She  was  too  much  affronted  to  call  a  good-by  after 
him;  and  he,  it  appeared,  was  too  much  amused  by  her 
ordinary  feminine  foolishness  concerning  man's  business, 
war,  to  notice  that  she  didn't.  "  Poor,  ignorant  boy — 
typical  cannon  fodder !  "  she  consoled  herself,  watching 
him  stride  off,  with  a  new  dignity  because  of  the  indignity 
that  he  suspected  in  her,  down  the  hill.  She  couldn't 
really  be  exasperated  with  him  long:  his  fighting  quirk, 
his  quirk  to  the  effect  that  her  opposition  to  war  was  mere 
woman's  timidity,  she  classified  with  his  other  native, 
boyish,  on  the  whole  rather  likable,  quirks.  Indeed,  she 
both  pitied  and  warmed  to  him  for  his  juvenile  rashness, 
and  missed  him  when  he  had  gone. 

She  hadn't  been  the  least  bit  in  love  with  him,  of 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  149 

course,  and  yet  he  had  freshened  her,  freshened  and 
exhilarated  all  her  senses  by  his  fresh,  devotional  boy's 
appeal  to  her  pity,  and  to  her  sex.  She  needed  that 
gentle  freshening,  as  the  petals  and  stamens  of  a  full 
blown  rose  need  the  dew.  Of  course  it  was  infinitely 
better  that  Skeeter  had  gone — gone  for  good — and 
yet — 

She  sighed  a  little  as  she  picked  her  way  carefully, 
because  of  her  very  feminine  footgear,  a  little  further 
down  the  hill,  and  she  sighed  again  as  she  sat  down  in 
full  view  of  the  road  to  wait  for  Henry  Hooghtyling. 
She  felt  rather  older  than  usual,  a  little  wilted,  drooping, 
faintly  touched  with  the  despondency  and  denial  that 
might  have  been  Skeeter's  intolerable  burden  but  for 
that  damned  lie.  The  trouble  with  her,  she  decided, 
searching  through  her  somewhat  shop-worn  stock  of  plain 
and  fancy  truths  for  a  true  explanation,  was  that  she 
hadn't  had  any  lunch,  and  the  day's  events  had  been 
rather  wearing.  She  felt  an  inexplicable  sudden  little 
thrill  of  resentment  against  the  callow  Celtic  Wood- 
bridgian  called  Skeeter — a  resentment  that  had  nothing 
to  do  with  his  attitude  toward  her  war-opinions. 

The  sun  was  lower,  the  wind  was  cool,  carrying  a  hint 
of  the  season's  first  frost  to  the  rose  petals  of  her  face, 
a  wind  that  seemed  unseasonably  cold  and  dry.  Clotilde 
shivered. 

"  A  modern  girl  never  could  do  it — she  knows  too 
much — and  the  knowledge  would  dry  up  the  inevitability, 
the  spontaneity,  that  would  be  its  chief  excuse,"  she  told 
herself.  "  Such  things  could  only  happen  beautifully — 
when  ignorance  was  bliss !  " 

That  thought  would  go  well  in  the  letter  to  her  mother 


150  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

that  she  intended  to  finish  that  evening,  after  supper. 
She  liked  the  bitterish  flavor  of  that  thought. 

It  was  growing  colder,  and  the  foolish,  feminine  frip 
peries  that  she  wore,  even  though  frankly  admitting  that 
one  chief  purpose  of  them  was  to  add  to  her  feminine 
allurements,  were  disgustingly  inadequate,  both  against 
the  growing  chill  in  the  air,  and  the  corresponding  chill 
in  her  feelings. 

She  wished  that  Henry  would  hurry;  they  might  walk 
up  and  down  the  road  as  they  talked,  relieving  her  chilli 
ness.  His  presence,  too,  would  help  to  relieve  a  petulant 
little  feeling  of  loneliness,  of  depression.  Something  had 
gone  out  of  the  day,  gone  with  that  callow  fighting  char 
acter  called  Skeeter,  and  something  else,  not  so  sweet, 
had  come  into  it. 

"  I'm  missing  that  boy!"  she  told  herself  sharply,  and 
felt  a  little  better  for  forcing  herself  to  face  that  small, 
simple  truth. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A  POOR  INVALID,  LURED  ONCE  MORE  FROM  HER 
CLOSED  CARRIAGE,  IS  CRUSHED  TO  EARTH,  BUN- 
DLED  IN  AGAIN,  AND  SENT  PACKING  BY  ETHEL 

A  LITTLE  further  up  the  hill,  Henry  Hooghtyling  had 
spent  a  restful  afternoon  of  pipe  smoking  and  philo 
sophical  meditation,  fancy  free. 

A  mile  beyond  and  above  Henry,  Ethel,  his  dutiful 
wife,  had  begun  to  worry  about  him.  After  all,  he  had 
gone  on  a  perilous  quest,  and  his  heart  wasn't  strong, 
and  his  physique  had  been  weakened  by  a  recent  shock. 
Uncle  Aleck,  after  the  removal  of  a  few  remnants  of 
molars,  had  testified  that  a  man  needed  to  be  purty  peart 
to  stand  the  gaff — it  was  no  entertainment  for  ladies  and 
children,  by  Jeremiah's  off  ox,  it  was  not!  Blood-lettin', 
cuttin',  pryin',  jabbin',  pullin',  till  a  man's  neck  was  out 
o'  joint — Oh,  boy!  and  yes,  yes! 

Ethel  thought  of  Henry's  neck,  not  much  larger  than 
a  sapling  inside  its  sagging  and  loosened  sheath  of 
wrinkled  skin.  Could  Henry's  neck  stand  the  strain? 
The  idea  of  such  a  neck  subjected  to  much  pulling  would 
have  caused  flutterings  in  a  harder  and  less  intimately 
concerned  heart  than  she  carried  in  her  buxom  bosom. 
Probably  Infinite  Wisdom  had  constructed  few  softer, 
larger,  more  gentle,  and  more  easily  affected  hearts  than 
hers.  When  pain  or  danger  hovered  over  any  member 
of  her  matriarchate,  her  heart  fairly  threatened  to  leap 
out  of  the  ample  bounds  provided  for  it. 


152  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

While  she  had  been  busy,  magnificently,  athletically 
busy,  with  doing  her  two  washings  and  a  half — counting 
her  own  weekly  addition  to  the  tub  as  at  least  half  a 
washing — she  had  not  had  time  to  worry  much.  But  the 
washing  was  all  out  on  the  line  by  three  o'clock;  the 
housework  was  all  done,  too.  Ordinarily,  she  would 
have  gone  down  to  lend  a  helping  hand  to  her  daughter- 
in-law,  but,  Henry  being  on  her  mind,  she  sat  down  and 
worried  about  him  for  a  complete  half-hour. 

"  Hen  has  got  so  awful  much  spunk — he's  so  like  to 
take  even  serious  trouble  without  any  fuss  and  feathers," 
she  told  herself,  among  other  things,  "  that  a  body  forgets 
he  ain't  really  what  you'd  call  strong." 

She  also  reminded  herself  that  "  he  didn't  rest  well  last 
night,  neither."  And  that  "  maybe  my  badgerin'  him 
about  his  stummick  sent  him  off  down  there  when  he 
wasn't  feelin'  up  to  it,  no  way."  And  also,  returning  to 
her  first  theme :  "  He's  nervy,  Hen  is ;  he  don't  rightly 
know  the  meanin'  of  fear.  He'd  go  and  do  a  thing, 
though  he  knew  it  might  lay  him  clean  out — 

"  Settin'  down  into  that  chair,  that  looks  for  all  the 
world  like  the  chair  they  use  to  'lectrocute  criminals,  up 
to  Sing  Sing,"  complained  Ethel,  with  tears  in  her  voice; 
"  all  bleedin' — him  that  ain't  got  no  more  blood  than  a 
good-sized  turnip — gettin'  his  neck  pulled  all  around 
crooked — Hen's  neck!" 

She  cleared  her  throat,  calmed  the  palpitations  of  her 
heart,  compressed  her  large  competent  mouth.  "  There, 
I  just  ain't  going  to  worry  about  it  any  more ! "  This 
decision,  forced  by  the  memory  of  Hen's  own  attitude 
toward  sentiment,  was  arrived  at  near  the  end  of  the 
half -hour  devoted  to  nothing  else.  "  Worryin'  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  153 

whinin'  never  yet  lifted  a  mortgage,"  she  told  herself, 
quoting  her  idiomatic  spouse,  subservient  even  to  his 
memory. 

She  tried  to  read  some  more  of  the  adventures  of 
the  gentleman  who  loved  and  conquered  in  the  red- 
backed  book,  but  her  eyes  looked  through  the  pages. 

"  I'll  bet  he  wanted  me  to  go  with  him ! "  she  told 
herself,  giving  up  all  pretense  of  bookishness.  "  When 
he  stopped  and  asked  if  they  was  anything  he  could  get 
me  down  to  Kingston,  he  was  just  waitin'  for  me  to  ask 
to  go  with  him,  too  look  a'ter  him  in  his  time  of  trial. 
That's  his  way — never  forcin'  a  body,  always  givin'  a 
woman  a  chance  to  speak  up  for  hersel-1-l-f !  "  She  was 
near  tears  again.  "  And  I  didn't  say  nothin' — and  he 
wouldn't  say  nothin',  o'  course,  that  bein'  his  way — and 
he  went  away  disappointed — Lor'  blast  me  for  a  ninny 
for  not  knowin'  what  he  was  up  to — for  not  goin'  with 
him !  " 

She  arose  and  slapped  the  book  down  on  a  corner  of 
the  white  oilcloth-covered  kitchen  table,  already  set  for 
supper, — slapped  it  down  with  a  vigor  that  sent  a  few 
grains  of  sugar  rolling  out  of  the  brimmed  glass  sugar 
bowl.  All  of  her  motions,  especially  when  her  emotions 
were  stirred,  bespoke  astonishing  muscle,  vigor,  vimful 
determination.  "  Bu-uh-uh !  "  she  snorted,  shaking  her 
head  like  a  horse  finding  feathers  in  its  hay.  "  I  can't 
be  settin'  here  when  he  may  a-fainted — be  laid  out  some 
where  with  a  shawl  over  him  and  a  saw-bones  feelin'  his 
pulse !  Leastwise,  he'll  never  be  able  to  walk  up  from  the 
village — if  he  ever  gets  that  fur !  " 

She  strode  into  the  connubial  cubby-hole  of  a  bedroom, 
donned  green  bonnet  and  long,  heavy,  fuzzy  black  coat, 


154  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

took  her  yellow  kid  gloves  in  her  hand,  and  set  forth  to 
rescue  and  to  save.  Now  that  her  doings  once  more 
deserved  the  name  of  action,  her  sentiments  were  well  in 
control.  Out  along  the  bluestone  flagging  to  the  gate  she 
stromped,  erect,  head  back  and  up,  chest  forward, 
stomach  in,  legs  moving  with  military  precision,  two 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  excellently  muscled  health, 
heft,  and  determination.  The  woman  commander  of 
Russia's  Battalion  of  Death  might  have  envied 
her. 

Yes,  Hen  had  had  a  shock,  a  considerable  shock,  only 
the  previous  afternoon,  she  reflected,  and  her  spine  stif 
fened  for  the  reflection.  That  mysterious  woman,  that 
female  of  villainous  smoothness,  spruceness,  good-looks, 
all  the  earmarks  of  a  proper  fictional  adventuress,  was 
somehow  mixed  up  with  her  Henry,  with  Ethel  Hooghty- 
ling's  Hen.  As  bound  to  do  by  her  marriage  vows  and 
all  her  inclinations  as  well,  she  had  obeyed  Henry's  orders 
not  to  meddle  in  this  matter,  not  even  to  think  of  it,  to  the 
extent  of  her  well-regulated  ability.  Her  self-control 
had  been  marvelous;  and  yet,  somewhere  in  the  back  of 
her  head  was  a  lingering  memory  of  that  woman,  a  few 
lingering  suspicions  as  to  what  that  woman  had  been 
trying  to  do  to  Hen.  That  memory  made  her  addition 
ally  glad  that  she  was  hastening  to  Henry's  side,  that 
she  was  a  fine  figure  of  a  woman  in  her  new  bonnet  and 
cloak,  carrying  her  new  yellow  gloves  fashionable  in  her 
left  hand,  that  she  felt  abundant  power  of  mind  and  arm 
to  deal  with  any  emergency.  She  was  as  completely, 
overpoweringly  motivated  as  an  Ibsen  drama. 

A  pleasant  stimulation,  both  of  fresh  September  air 
and  sun,  and  of  impending  mysteries,  dangers,  pitfalls 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  155 

related  both  to  teeth  and  suave  adventuresses,  filled  her 
veins.  The  whole  world  was  mysterious,  dangerous,  a 
thing  that  would  bear  watching,  such  watching  as  she 
was  competent  to  supply,  at  least  in  one  considerable 
corner.  No  proper  paper-back,  or  cloth-back,  either,  but 
revealed  the  multitudinous  dangers  and  mysteries  lurking 
on  every  hand.  She  felt  like  a  noble  duchess  of  romance, 
going  forth  to  face  trouble,  to  face  it  like  a  heroine  and 
vindicate  a  happy  ending.  Of  course  little  Woodbridge 
was  no  such  castled  and  darkly  mysterious  place  as  was 
granted  to  more  favored  duchesses  overseas,  and  yet 
even  little  Woodbridge — 

''  And  yet  they's  a  good  deal  nobody  knows  nawthin' 
much  about  goes  on,  even  in  little  old  Woodbridge — spe 
cially  since  the  artusses  came  in,"  surmised  Ethel,  glanc 
ing  down  and  out  at  the  sleepy  valley  community  as 
revealed  from  the  bend  in  the  downward  road,  near  a 
corner  of  the  Hooghtyling  orchard.  "  If  a  body  had  an 
eye  like  God's,  and  could  see  down  through  the  roofs  of 
all  them  houses  and  stoodlums — "  She  shook  her  head, 
darkly  pondering  the  secrets  of  Woodbridge. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  were  several  things  that 
nobody  knew  nothing  much  about  going  on  in  Wood- 
bridge  at  that  particular  instant  of  time;  it  needed  no 
superhuman  vision  to  prove  it.  Edna  Kling  knew  of 
some  of  the  matters,  Cy  Wetmore,  Alfred  Brown,  the 
hermit  symbolist,  and  Major  Parkinson  knew  of  others. 
By  taking  a  consensus  of  their  very  human  knowledge 
and  visions,  eschewing  the  discredited  supernatural  as 
unmodern,  the  following  were  a  few  of  the  more  or 
less  piquant  happenings  taking  place  in  Woodbridge  at 
that  moment: 


156  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Beginning  near  at  hand,  in  the  bungalow  of  Professor 
and  Mrs.  Benson  Hodges,  half  a  mile  from  the  Brooks' 
boarding  house,  a  young  instructor  of  Italian  in  Colum 
bia,  having  secured  the  keys  from  Professor  Hodges 
under  false  pretenses,  was  enjoying,  in  the  company  of 
a  girl  Ph.D.  from  Barnard,  as  hectic  a  culmination  of  a 
three-weeks'  romance  as  ever  got  into  fiction.  Professor 
Hodges,  having  rrtoved  down  to  New  York  for  the 
winter,  would  be  certain  to  find  this  out  from  the 
Brooks,  in  due  time,  and  speak  harshly  to  the  young 
instructor  of  Italian. 

Further  down,  in  the  Klings'  bungalow,  Edna  was 
saying  to  the  blinking  Arthur :  "  I'll  bet  she's  out  with 
Carey  Beemis — and  I'll  have  Helen  Hope  on  my  hands 
this  whole  blessed  night — Da-a-amn  it!" 

Still  further  down,  before  the  flag-pole  near  the 
entrance  to  his  white  little  cottage,  the  Major  was 
expressing  his  acceptance  of  an  invitation  to  attend  Cy 
Wetmore's  stag,  that  evening. 

"  Glad  you  can  come — we  want  to  make  it  the  best 
of  the  season,  since  it's  to  be  the  last — we  are  going  to 
make  a  bonfire  out  of  the  front  porch,  among  other  at 
tractions — and  there'll  be  a  real  punch,  Major,  a  real 
one !  "  said  Cy ;  he  was  in  a  hired  automobile,  a  great 
hurry,  and  a  fine  state  of  expectation. 

Diagonally  across  the  road,  Miss  Grace  Carton,  the 
miniaturist,  was  weeping  over  her  Persian  pussy, 
"  Smoke,"  because  he  would  eat  out  of  garbage  pails, 
and  get  the  gripes.  Half  a  mile  away,  in  "  Green  Gables," 
the  mistress  of  the  mansion,  a  disappointed  and  reckless 
beauty  because,  in  spite  of  her  great  catch,  London  and 
New  York  society  hadn't  been  able  to  forget  her  chorus- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  157 

girl  precedents,  was  locked  in  her  room,  delicately  snif 
fing  cocaine.  Her  husband,  older  than  Henry  Hooghty- 
Jing,  but  still  affectionate,  was  having  tea  on  the  other 
side  of  the  valley,  in  the  bungalow  of  a  spinster  portrait 
painter;  all  three  of  them  anticipated  a  lively  time  before 
the  night  was  out.  In  her  studio,  a  few  hundred  yards 
nearer  the  village,  Mrs.  Ladson,  grass  widow  and  tapestry 
designer,  had  removed  her  cigarette  to  say  to  Charley 
James  Bright;  "  My  husband  is  straight-laced;  he'd  never 
agree  to  a  divorce;  and  I  don't  know  that  I  want  one, 
anyway." 

Skipping  a  dozen  village  houses  and  bungalows  in 
which  Woodbridgians,  both  immigrant  and  autochthon 
ous,  were  doing  perfectly  proper  and  conventional,  and 
therefore  uninteresting,  things,  the  living-room  of  Helen 
Hope's  little  studio-bungalow,  near  the  banks  of  the 
Skuyterkill,  was  torn  up  as  if  a  recent  cyclone  had  passed 
that  way.  Helen  was  standing  bolt  upright,  short  hair 
disheveled,  hands  still  clenched,  lips  purple  and  bitten, 
glaring  at  the  results  of  her  recent  lonely  fury,  repeat 
ing  to  herself:  "A  woman  scorned!"  and  thinking  of 
bread-knives,  revolvers,  prussic  acid,  cyanide  of  potas 
sium,  knotted  sheets,  all  the  conventional  means  of 
murder,  or  suicide,  or  both. 

In  the  Tannery  Brook  boarding  house,  alone  in  the 
room  where  he  at  least  had  made  a  pretense  of  living, 
Carey  Beemis  was  packing  his  suitcase.  "  Told  her 
nothing  but  the  truth — it  had  to  come — we  agreed  to  tell 
each  other  the  plain  truth,  if  it  had  to  come,"  he  reassured 
himself  miserably,  for  the  hundredth  time:  adding,  at 
least  for  the  fiftieth  time :  "  Damn  the  women!  "  and  feel 
ing  particularly  vicious  when  he  thought  of  Clotilde  as, 


158  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

all  things  considered,  the  one  woman  whose  damning 
would  be  most  agreeable  to  him. 

Several  doors  down  the  street,  in  their  two  front  rooms 
in  the  old  Potter  house,  Angus  Andrew  MacDonald  was 
convincing  his  wife  that  it  would  be  necessary  for  him  to 
appear  at  Cy  Wetmore's  party :  "  But,  dear,  everybody 
will  be  there — and  it's  the  last  stag  of  the  season — they'll 
say  I'm  henpecked  if  I  don't  show  up.  Why,  even  Arthur 
Kling's  going! " 

"  Yes — and  you'll  all  get  howling  drunk — probably 
burn  the  house  down — and  you  know,  Angie,  we  simply 
can't  afford  another  such  contribution  for  damages  as 
was  necessary  after  Allan  Brooke's  party ! " 

"  Aw,  f orgit  it !  It's  going  to  be  a  quiet  little  party, 
I  tell  you — I  doubt  whether  there'll  be  anything  stronger 
than  beer  to  drink — you  know  how  hard  up  Cy  Wetmore 
is,"  her  husband  urged.  "  And  all  real  booze  at  war 
prices ! " 

If  this  seems  anti-climacteric,  let  us  return  toward 
Ethel,  in  fact  within  fifteen  minutes  of  Ethel's  vigorous 
approach,  to  where  a  matter  that  nobody  knew  nawthin' 
much  about  was  being  aired  by  Henry  Hooghtyling  and 
Clotilde.  They  were  sitting  on  the  remains  of  the  old 
stone  wall,  near  the  deserted  road,  and  their  conver 
sation,  even  if  it  was  a  little  guarded,  was  everything 
in  quietness  and  friendliness  that  Clotilde  had  hoped 
for. 

They  had  passed  through  generalities,  through  the 
presentation  of  the  tan  jabot,  which  dangled  incon 
gruously  at  the  throat  of  Clotilde's  white  silk  shirtwaist, 
and  had  entered  upon  a  point  specifically  at  issue. 

"  Why,  yes,  sure — I  suppose  they's  lots  of  things  we 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  159 

could  each  tell  the  other,"  Henry  had  just  admitted,  in 
response  to  Clotilde's  question. 

She  continued :  "  Yes.  You  see,  the  world  is  changing 
so  fast  nowadays,  a  girl  often  needs  the  help  of  plain 
common  sense,  of  good  conservative  wisdom  founded  on 
experience.  There  are  so  many — so  very  many — things 
I'd  like  to  talk  over  with  you !  " 

Henry  was  receptive :  "  Well — go  ahead !  They's 
nawthin'  to  prevent." 

"  Oh,  lots  of  things — especially  about  the  changes  that 
have  come  into  the  lives  of  women."  Clotilde  was  vague 
and  general;  she  moved,  with  care  in  handling  the  plain 
truth  that  would  have  done  credit  to  Henry  himself,  in 
the  direction  of  a  plea  for  their  great  intimacy :  "  Now, 
if  I  could  only — " 

"  Well,  what  changes,  uh?  "  demanded  Henry,  devoted 
to  the  specific  instance  as  always,  enjoying  a  chance  for 
intellectual  conversation. 

"  Oh,  in  economics — the  right  of  a  woman  to  be 
economically  independent."  She  was  prepared  to  pass 
lightly  over  specific  instances.  "  Yes,  that  might  be  some 
change,"  admitted  Henry  doubtfully,  not  recognizing 
under  the  high-sounding  nomenclature  the  arrangement 
which  he  and  Ethel  had  worked  out  and  greatly  enjoyed. 
"  The  right  of  women  to  be  separate  entities,  separate 
individuals,"  Clotilde  flitted  on.  "  To  have  their  own 
occupations — yes,  and  to  have  children,  without  being 
married,  if  they  want  to.  You  see,  there  are  many 
questions  coming  up  for  settlement  in  the  big  cities — " 

"  Minds  me  of  Ella  Collins,"  put  in  Henry.  "  There 
was  a  queer  case.  Had  three  children,  never  got  married 
— when  she  wanted  to  get  married  people  said  it  just 


i6o  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

didn't  seem  right  to  have  Ella  married;  and  besides,  ev'y- 
body  said,  who'd  do  the  spring  paperin'  round  here,  if 
she  got  married  and  went  away.  She  was  a  good  woman. 
Even  the  Dominie,  at  her  funeral,  said  he  didn't  think 
the  Lord  would  hold  it  against  her,  for  all  she  never  got 
married." 

"  Oh — she — you  mean  to  say,  she  wasn't  ostracized?  " 
asked  Clotilde. 

"  Not  that  I  ever  heard  of — leastways,  she  kep*  right 
on  havin'  children,"  said  Hen,  arriving  at  a  snap  judg 
ment  of  "  ostracized  "  that  did  him  some  credit.  "  We 
never  did  take  much  stock  in  some  of  the  fancy  new 
ways  for  reformin'  the  criminal  classes  round  here.  I 
was  talkin'  to  Doctor  MacFee  about  it,  and  he  said  he 
didn't  believe  into  it,  neither." 

"  But — you  said  Ella  Collins  was  a  good  woman — she 
didn't  belong  to  the  criminal  classes  ?  "  suggested  Clo 
tilde,  quite  at  sea  as  to  Henry's  flirting  with  the  ultra 
modern  idea  of  sterilization. 

"  Sure  not — I  was  just  thinkin'  of  what  you  said. 
Ella,  she  was  all  right.  She  was  a  paperhanger  by  trade, 
and  she  was  a  good  one — and  half  agin  as  cheap  as  most. 
Used  to  sing  in  the  Baptist  choir,  over  at  Montoma — 
righteous  good  soprano,  she  was,  too." 

"And  she  supported  herself — and  the  children?" 
Clotilde  had  stumbled  upon  a  modern  instance,  and  been 
side-tracked  by  it;  she  imagined  herself  revealing  it,  in 
its  primitive  glory,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Heterodoxy. 

"  Sure,  she  did.  Brought  up  her  children  right,  too. 
One  of  'em  in  California,  now,  and  one  of  'em,  the  girl, 
mar-ried  a  elevated  railroad  conductor,  down  to  Brooklyn; 
the  other  boy,  he  never  did  amount  to  much;  he  lives 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  161 

up  Onteora  way,  now.     She  took  good  care  on  'em,  and 
she  made  money. 

"  But  she  never  done  much  better,"  said  Henry,  "  by 
herself  and  her  children  than  Pearlie  Wilson,  lives  down 
to  Woodbridge  Village,  did.  Pearlie,  she  kinda  got 
mixed  up  with  a  married  man,  carpenter  by  trade,  and 
said  she  had  a  right  to  have  him,  even  if  he  was  married, 
seein'  as  he  loved  her  more'n  he  did  his  wife.  They 
set  up  housekeepin'  in  the  village,  but  it  got  so  folks 
wouldn't  hire  the  man  to  do  work  for  'em — they  said 
he  hadn't  done  right,  desertin'  his  wife  and  livin'  with 
another  woman  right  under  her  nose,  so  to  speak.  So 
Pearlie  and  her  man,  they  moved  over  to  Big  Indian. 
Then  the  man  got  lonesome  and  wanted  to  come  back 
to  Woodbridge,  where  he'd  lived  all  his  life,  so  he  came 
back  to  his  wife,  and  people  hired  him  again;  but  Pearlie, 
she  stayed  over  there  till  she  had  her  baby.  Then  she 
wrote  to  the  man,  and  told  him  he'd  ought  to  stand  at 
least  half  of  her  lyin'-in  expenses,  if  he  thought  that  was 
fair,  and  he  said  he  thought  it  was  fair  enough,  but  he 
didn't  have  the  money,  so  Pearlie  borryed  the  money 
from  Doctor  MacFee,  and  came  back  and  worked  it  out 
doin'  washin's  and  such.  She'd  a-had  a  hard  time  if 
her  cousin  hadn't  took  her  in;  he  didn't  have  much 
money,  but  his  wife  was  dead,  and  he  give  her  board 
for  herself  and  the  baby  for  doin'  work  around  the 
house.  He  keeps  that  tin  shop,  t'other  side  the  Lutheran 
Church.  By'nby  he  got  older,  and  Pearlie  got  to  doin' 
most  of  the  work  'round  the  shop.  I  guess  she's  doin' 
pretty  well  now — anyway,  she's  sent  her  daughter  off  to 
board  in  Kingston  and  go  to  the  High  School.  But  she 
sure  had  a  rough  time  at  first." 


1 62  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  She's  living,  now — in  Woodbridge?  "  asked  Clotilde. 

"  Sure — she's  round  the  tin  shop  most  every  day — 
hires  a  man  to  do  most  of  the  rough  work  now  she's  got 
on  pretty  well,  and  her  cousin  requirin'  good  deal  'tention, 
him  havin'  got  a  little  foolish,  's  old  men  are  like  to  do. 
Yes,  she's  got  on  pretty  well,  though  not  so  well  as 
Ella  did,  having  less  competition." 

Henry  lapsed  into  philosophical  meditation.  "  Yes, 
they's  a  lot  into  not  gettin'  married,  'specially  for  a 
woman,"  he  said.  "  I  dunno  but  what  both  Ella  and 
Pearlie  done  better'n  a  good  many  o'  the  regular  married 
women  'round  here,  for  all  they  had  their  troubles  at 
times." 

"  Well,"  said  Clotilde ;  "  this  is  all  interesting — very 
interesting.  It  does  me  good  to  talk  over  such  problems 
with  you.  You  see,  I  do  want  to  be  good  friends  with 
you.  Now,  how  am  I  going  to  really  be  good  friends 
with  you  when  I  can't  come  to  see  you — and  you  can't 
come  to  see  me  ?  " 

"  I  dunno,"  said  Henry  cautiously,  "  but  what  I  might 
come  to  see  you,  ev'y  once  in  so  often." 

Clotilde  objected:  "But  it  would  be  underhanded!  I 
don't  like  underhanded  things — the  idea  of  deceiving 
people.  Suppose  it  were  discovered — as  it  might  be, 
you  know, — that  you  were  coming  to  see  me — and  your 
wife  didn't  understand  why?  " 

"  Oh,  I  guess  I  can  work  that  all  right."  Henry  was 
inclined  to  airy  persiflage.  He  waved  his  pipe.  "  What 
Ethel  don't  know  won't  hurt  her  none.  Not  but  what  I 
ain't  ready  to  explain  to  her;  but  it's  got  to  take  time. 
She's  got  to  be  eddicated  to  it.  Now  I  can  eddicate  her 
— but  it's  got  to  be  done — gentle.  Slow,  you  know — 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  163 

step  at  a  time.  She  gits  all  excited  when  anything  hits 
her  sudden-like.  And  she's  got  a  temper — my  eye,  the 
temper  that  Ethel's  got — it's  plumb  amazin' !  " 

"  I  think  I've  seen  some  of  it,"  remarked  Clotilde 
dryly.  She  pitied  old  Henry;  his  boasting  of  his  ability 
to  handle  his  Amazonian  wife  reminded  her  of  a  boy 
whistling  in  the  dark. 

"  Oh,  Ethel  ain't  such  a  bad  sort — not  such  a  tarnation 
bad  sort,"  mentioned  Henry,  replying  to  the  animosity 
in  Clotilde's  voice.  "  O'  course  she  needs  a  good  deal  of 
eddicatin' — and  she  gets  queer  ideas  from  the  books  she's 
always  a-readin';  but  she  ain't  such  an  infernal  bad  sort, 
Ethel  ain't." 

"Well — that  isn't  the  question — "  began  Clotilde;  of 
course  she  admired  Henry  for  standing  up  for  his  wife, 
the  more  in  proportion  as  that  wife  undoubtedly  needed 
standing  up  for. 

"  In  fact,  she's  fairly  decent  in  some  ways,"  proceeded 
Henry;  as  was  his  way  in  dealing  with  any  person  or 
thing  that  possessed  his  whole  soul's  admiration,  he  was 
proceeding  from  downright  depreciation,  through  delicate 
degrees  of  praise,  to  the  heights  of  laudation ;  in  this  way 
he  attained  a  climax  made  greater  by  contrast.  "  She's 
a  good  worker,  honest  as  daylight,  hearty,  uncomplainin', 
don't  let  nawthin'  get  her  down — -why,  the  times  I  been 
plumb  ready  to  give  up  and  say,  Bring  on  the  rope,  I'm 
ready  to  quit — " 

"  Oh,  yes — of  course — "  interrupted  Clotilde. 

"  And  just  the  look  on  her  face'd  put  me  on  my  feet 
again !  "  declared  Henry,  inevitably,  determinedly,  on  his 
way  to  the  heights.  "  What  a  woman  she's  been  to  me 
— what  she  ain't  done !  Crawlin'  round,  near  dead,  with 


164  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

half  a  dozen  ailyments  any  one  the  doctor  said  was 
enough  to  kill  her — and  it's  enough  to  give  a  man  a 
feelin'  in  the  goodness  of  Providence  to  see  the  way  she's 
come  through  it  all,  too !  I  reckon  they  ain't  no  man  in 
Woodbridge  township's  got  a  woman's  been  to  him  what 
Ethel's  been  to  me!  When  I  die,  and  tough's  I  am  I 
guess  I  won't  last  a  great  while  longer,  she'll  be  s'prized 
to  see  what  she's  got  comin'  in  the  way  of  insurance 
money!  She  thinks  I  got  only  a  measly  little  thousand 
dollars— Uh !  I'd  like  to  see  her  face  when  she  sees  them 
two  policies  I  took  out  since  then — Lord,  how  I  had  to  lie 
to  her  to  keep  her  from  guessin'  where  the  money  was 
goin' !  Say,  I'll  hate  to  be  dead  because  I  can't  see  how 
she'll  look !  I  ain't  got  no  foolish  notions  I'll  be  around 
watchin'  her  after  that — sometimes  I'm  most  tempted — " 
Henry  stared  grimly  into  vacancy,  full  of  his  edifying 
problem.  "  Actually,  I'm  most  tempted  to  show  her  them 
policies,  some  Chrismus,  say,  just  to  see  how  she'll 
take  on!" 

There  was  a  silence.  The  sun  had  gone  down,  there 
was  frost  in  the  air;  Clotilde  shivered,  in  spite  of  her 
forgetfulness  of  the  state  of  the  weather,  and  Henry 
leisurely  knocked  out  his  pipe  and  got  to  his  feet. 

"  I  got  to  be  climbin'  the  ole  hill,"  he  announced, 
gathering  up  the  paper  bag  that  held  his  aged  green  hat. 
"  Chores  to  do,  and  Ethel'll  be  pretty  tired,  what  with  a 
big  washin'." 

Clotilde  rose  also,  crossed  her  thinly  clad  arms,  and 
hugged  herself  with  an  unconscious  little  shiver.  "  I'll 
walk  a  little  way  up  with  you,"  she  volunteered.  "  We 
haven't  even  arranged  when  I'm  to  see  you  again." 

Henry  looked  doubtful,  suggested  doubtfully:  "Well, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  165 

maybe  we  just  better  leave  it  till  I  have  time  to  kinda 
git  Ethel  started  onto  the  right  track.  And  maybe  you 
better  not — maybe  you  better  just  run  along  down — you 
got  quite  a  ways  to  go,  you  know — "  He  glanced  in  the 
direction  of  home  and  Ethel.  "  Nothin'  sudden  ought 
to  happen — I  got  things  goin'  along  smooth — steady's 
the  word,  slow  and  steady — 'specially  that's  the  word 
with  Ethel.  She's  a  trifle  excitable,  Ethel  is — forgets 
herself  like—" 

"  Well — will  you  come  down  to  the  Klings'  house  to 
morrow  afternoon  ?  "  demanded  Clotilde,  blocking  his 
way. 

Henry  looked  over  her  shoulder,  up  the  homeward  road 
that  vanished  around  the  curve  of  one  of  its  numerous 
zigzags,  fifty  feet  away.  "Hear  anything?"  he  asked 
anxiously.  '  Team  must  be  comin' — seems  to  me  I 
kinda  feel — but  my -ears  ain't  good." 

"  It  sounds  like  a  team,"  admitted  Clotilde,  turning  to 
stare  up  the  road. 

"  Good-by !  "  Henry  was  already  on  his  way,  passing 
her.  "  Maybe  you  can  catch  a  ride — but  we  oughtn't  be 
seen — " 

Ethel  came  around  the  turn  in  the  road,  striding  mag 
nificently  downward,  sending  road-bed  dust  flying  at  each 
earth-shaking  stride,  saw  them,  paused,  stood  motion 
less,  a  large,  ominous,  black-coated  effigy  of  indignant 
surprise. 

Henry  stood  still;  Clotilde  glanced  from  the  statu 
esque  Ethel  to  him.  She  expected  him  to  quail,  perhaps 
to  faint,  and  she  was  prepared  to  defend  him,  or  to 
support  his  nerveless  limbs  to  the  ground,  whichever 
should  prove  necessary.  Clotilde  swelled  to  the  occasion, 


166  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

drew  herself  up  on  her  high-heeled  pumps  until  she  was 
taller  than  Henry,  stood  so  four-square  and  chesty  that 
her  bosom,  though  not  to  be  compared  to  the  mighty 
breast-works  of  Ethel,  suggested  power  and  virginal  in 
vincibility:  Joan  of  Arc  never  faced  enemy  with  a  face 
more  conscious  that  Truth  stood  at  her  right  hand. 

But  Henry  did  not  quail.  To  the  high  and  honorable 
and  altogether  liberty-or-death  expressions  on  the  faces 
of  the  two  women,  he  opposed  a  fussy  disgust,  a  common- 
sense  distrust  and  dislike  of  heroics,  whether  founded 
on  the  Pure  Truth  that  armed  Clotilde  or  the  Moral 
Righteousness  that  made  Ethel  a  tower  of  strength  and 
determination. 

Slowly,  ominously,  stepping  off  the  intervening  length 
of  road  with  the  impertubability  of  a  proper  duchess 
bearing  retribution  for  the  foul  wrong,  Ethel  approached. 
Her  eyes  transfixed  Clotilde.  Clotilde  waited  for  her, 
quailing  no  more  before  her  than  David  quailed  before 
Goliath.  It  was  a  situation  with  three  heroes,  three 
champions  of  three  supreme  virtues;  there  needed  no 
deep-dyed  villain  or  villainess  to  give  it  weight  and  sig 
nificance.  With  Truth,  Morality,  and  Common  Sense 
met  by  proxy  on  the  Field  of  Honor  any  ordinary  human 
villain,  any  personage  less  important  than  the  Devil  him 
self,  could  not  but  have  obfuscated  the  issues.  Even  the 
Devil  might  not  have  added  anything  important. 

Common  Sense's  champion  dealt  the  first  blow,  a 
light,  tentative  stroke,  not  intended  to  do  damage  so  much 
as  to  try  out  Morality's  champion's  armor :  "  What's  the 
matter,  Ethel  ?  Anything  wrong  up  to  the  house  ?  " 

Morality's  champion's  armor  rang  like  the  hardened 
steel  it  was:  "There's  nothing  wrong  up  to  the  house, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  167 

Hen ;  but  I  don't  know  'bout  some  other  places ! " 
Morality's  champion  had  a  deep,  baritone  voice,  a  meas 
ured  accent;  she  looked  rather  at  the  slim,  virginal,  white- 
faced  champion  of  Truth  than  at  disgusted  Common 
Sense  as  she  spoke.  Morality,  standing  decently  clothed, 
buxom  and  self-confident  behind  her  champion,  stared 
malignantly  at  the  Truth  that  stood  at  Clotilda's  right 
hand. 

Truth,  venturing  from  the  closed  carriage  in  which 
Clotilde  had  brought  her  up  to  Woodbridge,  had  taken 
her  courage  in  her  hands;  she  answered  Morality's  chal 
lenging  sneer  with  a  face  calm,  white  as  carven  marble, 
with  eyes  cold  and  blue  as  ice.  Truth  was  barefooted  in 
the  dust  of  the  road,  and  her  few  filmy  draperies  were  no 
adequate  protection;  she  had  thoughtlessly,  as  usual,  left 
her  eider-down  comforter  and  steamer  rugs  in  the  car 
riage  down  the  hill,  when  she  realized  that  another 
struggle  with  Common  Sense,  and  especially  with 
Morality,  was  imminent;  she  had  a  single-track  mind. 

"  You  are  mistaken,  Mrs.  Hooghtyling — there  is 
absolutely  no  wrong  here !  "  declared  Truth's  champion, 
in  a  ringing  contralto;  "except  the  wrong  you  do  us 
by-" 

"Oh — isn't  there?"  rumbled  the  defender  of  Moral 
ity;  whereupon  Morality  stuck  out  her  tongue  at  Truth, 
and  Truth  averted  her  sculpturesque  face.  Their  quarrel 
was  an  old  one,  and  Morality  generally  had  so  much  the 
better  of  it  that  Truth,  when  venturing  down  from  her 
mountain-tops  into  the  haunts  of  mortals,  usually  was 
reduced  to  invalidism  at  once,  and  remained  in  a  weak 
ened  and  battered  state  till  she  went  back  to  recuperate. 
One  seeing  Truth  during  these  visits,  catching  a  glimpse 


168  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

of  her  through  the  windows  of  her  carriage,  would  never 
have  believed  her  the  same  splendid  virgin  who  was  ac 
customed  to  greet  the  sunrise,  naked,  in  immortal  love 
liness,  from  the  icy  summits  of  a  heaven-scaling  crag. 
But  still,  as  of  old,  she  harkened  to  the  prayers  of  her 
rare  devotees,  and  attempted  to  reveal  herself  to  mortals. 
Morality,  whose  breath  was  short,  whose  corsets  made 
her  face  purple  if  she  walked  half-way  up  one  of  the  low 
Catskill  hills,  usually  managed  to  make  her  visits  short 
and  unpleasant.  Common  Sense,  while  respecting  Truth 
at  the  bottom  of  his  hale  old  heart,  recognized  that  her 
objection  to  clothes,  especially  conventional  clothes,  made 
her  a  menace  to  imperfect  civilizations,  and,  in  general, 
sided  with  Morality,  even  while  despising  Morality,  and 
dealing  her  many  hard  knocks.  Common  Sense,  looking 
like  a  heartier,  happier,  more  prosperous  brother  to 
Henry  Hooghtyling,  sat  on  the  nearby  stone  wall,  and 
chuckled. 

"  Let's  not  get  excited,  now — no  use  gettin'  excited 
till  we  find  out  what  we're  gettin'  excited  about,"  sug 
gested  Common  Sense's  champion,  for  the  benefit  of 
Morality's  champion's  reddening  face  and  dangerously 
gleaming  eyes. 

"  No — let's  just  explain — "  began  Clotilde,  shivering 
both  because  of  her  own  scanty  coverings,  and  out  of 
sympathy  for  the  nearly  naked  Truth  at  her  side. 

"  I  guess  it  needs  some  explainin' !  "  boomed  Ethel, 
deepening  her  baritone  to  upper  bass.  Morality  leaned 
forward  and  whispered  in  her  ear.  "  First,  I  find  you 
holdin'  my  husband  in  your  arms,  him  havin'  fainted — 
next  day  I  find  you  loiterin'  on  the  road  with  him !  Yes, 
I  guess  it'll  need  some  explaining  " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  169 

Truth  ventured  a  tremulous  word  of  advice  to  Clotilde. 
"  The  fact  is,  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  I'm  Henry's  daughter," 
explained  Clotilde,  somewhat  weakly;  Truth  on  the  in 
stant,  obeying  her  natural  impulses  almost  subconsciously, 
it  seemed,  let  fall  every  stitch  of  drapery  she  had  brought 
with  her  from  her  carriage,  and  stood  revealed,  white  and 
wonderful  as  any  poet-sculptor's  marble  dream  of  her. 
Common  Sense,  forced  to  admiration  but  very  doubtful 
of  her  taste,  shook  his  head  and  sighed,  smiling  faintly. 
Henry  imitated  him,  with  a  personal  modification  in 
favor  of  a  philosophical  sniff.  As  for  Morality,  she 
threw  up  her  hands  in  absolute  horror,  and  averted  her 
blushing  face.  Morality's  champion  glared  daggers, 
found  no  words,  for  a  moment,  fit  for  the  shameful  sit 
uation,  turned  quite  purple  with  sudden  horror.  "  You 
— you  hussy!"  she  gasped,  searching  for  her  lost  voice. 

"  Soft,  now — things  is  going  too  fast — and  fur!  "  put 
in  Common  Sense's  warrior.  "  Don't  forgit  yourself, 
Ethel!"  Ethel's  lifted  forearms  and  suddenly  working 
fingers  suggested  an  immediate  personal  attack  both  upon 
the  shockingly  naked  Truth  and  upon  the  naked  Truth's 
not  overclothed  spokesman.  "  Remember,  Ethel,  you 
always  regret  it  when  you  forgit  yourself ! "  Henry 
warned  her,  truthfully  interpreting  the  grim  enjoyment 
and  uneasiness  of  Common  Sense  on  the  stone  wall,  a 
few  paces  away. 

"  Yes,  Hen."  The  answer  was  soft.  Morality  at 
once  looked  around,  surprised,  shocked,  by  the  change 
in  her  champion's  voice  and  air.  Vivaciously  she  argued 
with  Ethel,  spitefully  she  informed  her  that  Henry  was 
equally  guilty,  that  it  was  Morality  against  the  field. 
Ethel  shook  her  head.  "  Well,  then,  for  Conscience's 


170  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

sake,  go  after  those  two  shameless,  brazen,  indecently 
exposed  hussies  over  there !  "  urged  Morality. 

"  I've  told  you  the  truth,  Mrs.  Hooghtyling !  "  insisted 
Clotilde. 

"  You — you — and  your  Truth! "  gasped  Ethel,  glaring 
at  both  of  them.  "  Why,  you  shameless — " 

"  Now,  Ethel! " 

"  Yes,  Hen." 

Morality  bit  her  lips  for  exasperation.  Her  champion 
was  certainly  disappointing.  Married  women  often  were 
when  their  husbands  were  concerned.  "  Oh,  for  a  man, 
a  good  orthodox  minister  of  the  gospel — or  a  noble, 
moral-minded  spinster !  "  sighed  Morality. 

As  for  Common  Sense,  with  a  bit  of  a  chuckle  he  fished 
a  fat  black  cigar  out  of  his  waistcoat  pocket,  lit  it,  and 
puffed  blue  wreaths  of  enjoyment  into  the  evening  air. 
He  had  become  accustomed  to  bear  off  the  palm  quite 
as  often  as  Morality  in  these  enlivening  three-cornered 
squabbles.  There  was  an  ironical  touch  in  this  because 
he  didn't  care  for  palms  especially — at  least  not  with  the 
fervor  characteristic  of  those  female  enthusiasts,  Truth 
and  Morality.  He  was  quite  satisfied  with  the  way 
things  were  going.  Henry  Hooghtyling,  his  not  un 
worthy  representative,  got  out  pipe  and  tobacco.  Henry, 
also,  seemed  fairly  content  with  the  state  of  the  conflict. 

"  I  just  want- to  say,"  resumed  Ethel,  in  a  voice  that 
caused  Morality  to  hope  again,  though  faintly,  "  Miss, 
that  if  you're  expecting  to  alienate  my  husband's  affec 
tions,  you'll  have  to  reckon  with  the  law — I  guess  I  know 
something  about  the  law — and  if  you  think — " 

"  Oh,  won't  you  understand  ?  I've  told  you  the  truth 
— I  have  a  right — " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  171 

"  The  truth ?     I  guess  I  know  how  much  truth!  " 

"  That  is  your  line !  "  urged  and  approved  Morality, 
with  a  regard  for  the  Truth  approximating  the  Devil's 
for  holy  water,  and  with  excellent  reason,  too.  Ethel 
rushed  on,  seizing  the  opportunity  given  by  the  lighting 
of  Henry's  pipe :  "  I  don't  want  any  of  your  old  truth ! 
I  want  you  to  leave  my  husband  alone!  If  you  don't — " 

Common  Sense  had  already  removed  his  cigar  from  his 
mouth  to  gape;  Henry,  after  one  good  whiff,  removed  his 
pipe.  "  Now,  everybody  just  shut  up  a  minute !  "  com 
manded  Henry. 

"  But,  Hen — "  Morality's  champion  fell  back  at  least 
two  paces.  Morality,  in  complete  disgust,  turned  away 
and  walked  up  the  road  a  few  paces  to  get  her  feelings 
under  control. 

"I  said — everybody  shut  up!"  growled  Henry;  his 
prominent  blue  eyes,  enhanced  by  straggling  reddish 
eyebrows,  looked  from  Truth  to  Morality,  and  to  their 
respective  champions,  with  equal  disfavor.  Common 
Sense  puffed  his  cigar,  removed  it  as  his  risibilities  be 
came  too  much  for  him.  "  Wow !  "  he  muttered,  chuck 
ling  so  that  his  mirth  made  him  shake  through  all  his 
substantial  members.  "  That  dried-up  old  Dutch  farmer 
—who'd  a-thought  it?" 

"  Yes,  Hen."  Morality's  champion  was  temporarily 
out  of  the  combat.  Common  Sense  turned  his  attention 
to  the  Truth  contingent. 

Truth  herself,  uplifted,  angry,  shaken  with  fla'ming  in 
dignation  by  this  attempt  at  suppression,  urged  Clotilde 
to  speak,  to  vindicate  freedom  of  speech.  "  Freedom 
of  speech — speak,  speak  out  the  truth!  "  she  commanded; 
"  shall  any  mere  man,  or  combination  of  men  and  cir- 


172  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

cumstances,  suppress  freedom  of  speech,  close  up  the 
great  channel  of  the  Truth  ?  Think  of  your  brothers  and 
sisters,  my  devotees,  undergoing  arrest,  vilification,  now, 
on  the  street  corners  of  New  York  City,  for  the  sake  of 
freedom  of  speech — the  truth  as  revealed  to  them — " 

"  Hell,"  put  in  Common  Sense,  less  in  anger  than  re 
gret.  "  Think  of  expediency,  kid,  think  of  expediency." 

"  Don't  listen  to  that  blase  old  hedonist !  "  cried  Truth, 
her  whole  body  turning  rosy  with  excitement  and  shame. 

"  I  think  I'd  rather  wait  and  hear  what  Henry  has 
to  say  for  Common  Sense,"  objected  Clotilde,  faintly 
resisting  even  her  adored  Truth. 

Common  Sense  went  off  into  a  silent,  open-mouthed 
burst  of  laughter.  "Who  says  the  world  don't  move? 
It'll  be  better  for  you,  Truth,  in  the  end,  if  kiddo  there 
keeps  her  mouth  shut.  That  old  farmer'll  fix  things 
yet,"  he  remarked. 

"  What  do  I  care  for  better  or  worse?  "  wailed  Truth. 
"  Who  has  a  right  to  count  the  cost  ?  "  But  she  realized 
that  she  had  lost  at  least  a  part  of  Clotilde's  devotion. 
She  shuddered,  not  with  the  cold  which  was  her  native 
element,  but  with  regret  for  human  frailty.  She  was 
weakened,  too,  by  several  days  among  mortals,  especially 
by  her  Woodbridge  experiences,  begun  under  such  favor 
able  auspices,  in  the  company  of  Clotilde. 

"  So  it  goes,"  remarked  Truth  sadly.  She  found  her 
drapery — it  resembled  a  lace  curtain  in  most  particulars 
— and  threw  it  around  her.  Even  if  it  did  her  no  greater 
service,  it  was  a  sign  of  her  dejection. 

Henry,  with  the  matter  pretty  much  in  his  hands, 
puffed  his  pipe.  "  We  got  to  consider  facts — and  we 
got  to  consider  how  people'll  take  'em,"  he  announced. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  173 

"  Hear,  hear ! "  applauded  Common  Sense,  from  the 
stone  wall. 

"  But  the  truth  is  greater  than  any  number  of  mere 
facts,"  Truth  mentioned  sadly  to  Clotilde.  Morality, 
returning  down  the  road,  snarled  gruffly  at  Ethel :  "  Tell 
him  morality's  deeper  than  what  people  will  say !  "  But 
neither  Truth  nor  Morality  had  much  faith  in  the  out 
come.  Only  Common  Sense  was  jubilant. 

"  Clotilde  here,  she's  right — she's  told  the  truth — and 
there's  nawthin'  like  the  Truth,"  Henry  proceeded  firmly. 

"Aw,  come  off!"  muttered  Common  Sense,  slightly 
shocked. 

"  The  Truth  is  mighty,  and  shall  prevail."  Henry 
chewed  his  pipe  stem. 

"Rotten — wake  up — get  onto  yourself!"  growled 
Common  Sense,  bouncing  up  from  his  comfortable  seat, 
shaking  out  his  trousers  with  a  vicious  kick  of  either 
foot.  Henry  took  no  notice  of  him  whatever;  Morality 
glowered  malignantly  at  him,  and  Truth  favored  him 
with  a  sad  smile.  "  You  old  fool !  "  sputtered  Common 
Sense,  coming  over  to  be  nearer  his  wavering  dis 
ciple. 

"  Then,  too,"  pursued  Henry,  "  we  got  to  think  of 
what  people  will  say — they's  such  a  thing  as  other  people's 
feelin's." 

"He's  lying  to  you,  plain  lying!"  Morality  told  her 
paralyzed,  dumbfounded  champion.  "  His  daughter — 
do  you  think  it's  possible?  Look  at  her — look  at  him! 
Why's  she  after  him?  He's  lying — just  to  put  you  off !  " 
But  Ethel  indignantly  repulsed  her:  "Hen  never  lies! 
'Tain't  in  him ! "  "  Oh,  you  poor  weak  married 
women!  "  sputtered  Morality,  recognizing  the  uselessness 


174  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

of  one  of  her  chief  weapons,  forged  and  sharpened  for 
her  by  the  Devil  himself. 

"  They's  such  a  thing  as  morality — when  a  man's  done 
wrong,  he'd  ought  to  stand  ready  to  take  the  conse 
quences — I  ain't  thinkin'  so  much  of  myself,"  Henry 
proceeded.  ((<Damn  the  old  farmer!"  sputtered  Com 
mon  Sense,  chewing  at  his  cigar.)  "I'm  thinkin'  more 
of  Ethel,  here,"  said  Henry.  "  She's  got  something  to 
say  about  this.  So  has  Clotilde,  here." 

"  Oh,  Hen — "  choked  Ethel,  her  eyelids  beginning  to 
quiver;  she  walked  unsteadily  over  to  his  side,  put  her 
hand  in  his  arm. 

Clotilde  stammered  faintly :  "  I  didn't  mean — of  course 
— I  wanted  what  was  best  for  everybody — " 

"  I've  done  wrong — it  was  a  long  time  ago — I  was 
wild — like  all  young  bucks — not  that  I'm  offerin' 
excuses — "  Henry  choked  over  his  confession. 

"  Aw,  He-ell-ll! "  groaned  Common  Sense.  But  he 
brightened  up  a  bit  when  he  looked  at  Truth;  Truth, 
pulling  her  scanty  draperies  about  her,  was  cowering 
against  Clotilde  for  protection.  "  Really,  my  dear — I 
don't  think — I  can  stand  much  more — "  she  gasped.  "  I 
know — I  know,"  whispered  Clotilde,  comforting  both  her 
goddess  and  herself ;  "  but  if  it  does  him  good  to  think 
of  it  like  that — and  if  it  does  Ethel  any  good — "  "  In- 
grate — false  disciple !  "  cried  Truth,  aroused,  drawing 
clear  of  Clotilde's  presence.  "  Bottle  o'  soothing  syrup 
for  the  Truth — quick !  "  ordered  Common  Sense,  quite 
himself  again.  "  Can't  you  say  one  word  for  me,  dear 
— can't  you  at  least  say  one  word  that  will  cover  my 
shame  from  that  odious  brute?"  Truth  glared  like  an 
aroused  Diana  at  Common  Sense. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  175 

Clotilda,  so  hectored,  began  faintly :  "  Both  in  fairness 
to  Henry,  and  to  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  I  think  I  ought  to 
say  that  it  doesn't  seem  to  me  to  have  been  wrong — what 
happened,  so  many  years  ago  between  my  mother  and 
him — not  so  very  wrong  at  least.  Let  us  look  at  it  fairly, 
let  us  try  to  get  at  the  truth  of  it.  Isn't  it  nearer  the 
truth  that  both  my  mother  and  Henry — " 

"Oh!"  burst  from  Ethel;  Morality  had  just  jogged 
her  in  the  ribs,  shouting  in  her  ear :  "  Merciful  Heavens 
— she's  defending  it — your  husband's  error  with  that 
abandoned  woman!  Speak  up  if  you  have  any  regard 
for  morality !  " 

"  The  truth — you're  always  talkin'  about  the  truth! " 
gasped  Ethel,  freeing  herself  from  her  husband's  arm, 
glaring  through  Clotilde  at  the  naked  Truth  that  cowered 
behind  her. 

"  Now,  Ethel!"  Henry  warned  her;  but  no  submissive 
"  Yes,  Hen  "  came  back.  Ethel  was  in  process  of  for 
getting  herself:  "  How  dare  you  come  up  here  where  me 
and  Hen  has  lived  happy  these  thirty  years,  more  or  less, 
tellin'  your  immoral — your  dirty  old  secret — sayin'  it's 
the  truth,  that  it  wasn't  wrong?"  The  thunder  of  her 
voice,  the  lightning  of  her  eyes,  piercing  the  gathering 
twilight,  piercing  even  the  obstructive  barrier  of  Clotilde, 
smote  the  feeble  and  discouraged  Truth  full  in  the  fore 
head.  Truth  swayed,  trembled.  "  Tellin'  me  my  hus 
band  is  that  sort  of  a  man — what  do  I  care  whether  it's 
true  or  not  when  I  can't  never  sleep  again  quiet  of  nights 
for  thinkin'— Oh,  God!  Oh,  God!  I  wish  I'd  never 
heard  o'  the  Truth — I  wish  the  Truth  was  in  hell! " 
Tears  streamed  down  her  face,  but  they  did  not  soften 
the  steady  flow  of  electricity  from  her  blinking  eyes. 


176  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Clotilde  faced  her,  overwhelmed,  shrinking,  utterly 
amazed.  Truth,  immediately  behind  her,  sank  down 
crushed,  in  a  dead  faint,  in  the  dust  of  the  road. 

"  Ethel,  when  you  get  through  forgettin'  yourself — " 
Henry  remarked,  cool  as  his  maximatic  cucumber. 
"  Say,  you're  not  doing  so  badly,"  Common  Sense  in 
formed  him;  "if  only  you  hadn't  lived  all  your  life  in 
the  backwoods,  there  might  be  some  hope  for  you." 
Common  Sense  turned  toward  Morality.  "  Let's  go 
down  to  the  Inn,  and  have  some  supper,"  he  suggested. 
"  There  isn't  going  to  be  anything  creditable  for  any  of 
us  divinities  in  the  outcome  of  this  row — although  Truth 
will  get  it  in  the  neck  solider  than  either  you  or  I — as 
usual." 

"  Just  wait  a  minute,"  objected  Morality,  nodding  at 
Ethel.  "  I'm  not  so  sure."  Morality  was  looking  more 
hopeful. 

"  The  truth  is,  it's  a  disgrace! "  stormed  Ethel.  Truth, 
as  usual  after  a  collapse,  rose  feebly  to  her  feet.  Ethel 
attacked  her  vigorously :  "  Get  out,  you  and  your  Truth — 
get  out — I  never  want  to  see  either  of  you  again ! " 

"Are  you  coming,  dear?"  asked  Truth  mournfully, 
retreating  toward  the  privacy  and  invalid's  wrappings 
of  her  closed  carriage. 

"I  am  not!"  returned  Clotilde;  to  Ethel  she  an 
nounced,  sharply :  "  You  are  taking  just  the  proper  course 
to  make  everything  hard  for  all  of  us — isn't  she,  Mr. 
Hooghtyling?  "  Henry  puffed  his  pipe. 

"  Well,  why  do  you  come  around  lettin'  out  such 
things?"  demanded  Ethel;  she  was  by  way  of  getting 
over  forgetting  herself,  but  still  ruthless  in  her  pursuit 
of  retreating  Truth.  "  People  don't  go  uncoverin'  old 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  177 

stink-holes  less'n  they  have  to,  do  they?"  Truth  had 
reached  her  carriage  door;  this  blow  seemed  to  lift  her 
bodily,  and  she  disappeared  from  view.  Common  Sense 
and  Morality  looked  at  each  other  and  grinned. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  call  me  a  stink-hole — or  a  product 
of  one  ?  "  demanded  Clotilde,  now  that  Truth  had  dis 
appeared,  getting  down  to  concrete  facts. 

"  Woof !  "  said  Common  Sense,  recognizing  a  new 
champion.  "  Hit  'er  again !  " 

"  Her  illustration  is  beside  the  point — completely," 
objected  Morality. 

"  Well — I — "  hesitated  Ethel,  too  much  shocked  to 
appreciate  the  fine  retort  offered  by  Morality. 

"  If  you  don't  like  to  talk  about  the  Truth,"  pursued 
Clotilde  evenly,  "  let's  just  talk  about  a  few  plain  facts. 
Isn't  it  a  fact  that  I  have  some  claims  on  my  father — 
on  the  man  who  begot  me  ?  Didn't  he  accept  any  respon 
sibility  when  he  did  that?  Is  it  my  fault  that  I  wasn't 
born  in  a  proper  and  moral  way  ?  " 

"  Many  a  better  woman  than  you,  Miss,"  said  Ethel, 
"  has  had  to  bear  the  sins  of  others."  Common  Sense 
guffawed  approbation. 

Clotilde  was  nonplussed  only  for  a  moment :  "  But 
does  that  make  it  right  f  "  Again  she  appealed  to  the 
silent,  somewhat  discredited  champion  of  Common  Sense. 
"  Does  that  make  it  right?  " 

"  If  Ethel  don't  mind  if  I  say  a  word  or  two — my  voice 
ain't  quite  so  stro-o-ong  as  hers — "  Henry  hazarded. 
He  seemed  to  be  suffering  from  pained  ennui. 

Ethel  capitulated  with  a  suddenness  that  would  have 
disgusted  Morality  if  Morality  hadn't  got  past  the  point 
of  expecting  anything  from  her.  "  There,  Hen — I  been 


178  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

forgettin'  myself  again — "  She  fluttered  back  to  his 
side,  tears  were  in  her  eyes  and  voice.  "  I  know  you're 
not  stro-ong,  and  I'm  forgettin',  too,  all  you  been  through 
this  afternoon — enough  to  lay  out  a  real  peart  man,  for 
all  you're  so  nervy — Hen — "  She  took  his  sagging  arm 
in  both  hands,  giving  way  to  uncontrollable  sobs;  he 
shook  like  a  sapling  in  the  wind  under  the  burden  of 
her  grief.  "  Oh — Hen — say  you  forgive  me  for — for 
for-gett-tt-in'  myself!  And  you  all  weak  what  with 
pullin'  an'  blood-lettin' — " 

"  There,  you  had  good  cause — I  ain't  sayin'  but  what 
you  had  good  cause,"  he  comforted  her,  maintaining  his 
balance  with  some  effort.  "  It  come  on  you  suddenlike. 
Why,  it  clean  knocked  me  out  when  I  first  heard  of  it 
— me,  a  man.  You've  done  awful  well,  Ethel,  not  to  get 
more  upset  than  what  you  have." 

"  No — I  been  weak — foolish — "  insisted  Ethel,  in 
gulping  gasps. 

"  You  wouldn't  a-been  a  woman,  if  you  hadn't 
been." 

"  No.  I  s'pose  not.  I  s'pose  not,  Hen."  She  bent 
and  affectionately  wiped  her  eyes  and  nose  on  the  shoul 
der  of  his  best  coat.  "  There  now — we  all  got  our  senses 
back,  anyway,"  Henry  comforted  her  uncomfortably. 
"  Brace  up  now,  Ethel ;  this  young  lady  has  asked  us 
a  question,  and  it  deserves  an  answer — a  fair,  square 
answer."  Henry  became  judicial. 

"  The  question  she  asks  is  whether,  just  because  some 
children  has  had  to  bear  their  parents'  sins,  that  makes  it 
right.  And  the  answer  is  no,  that  don't  make  it  right. 
You're  wrong,  Ethel,  if  you  think  it  does! " 

"  Yes,  Hen." 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  179 

"  I  was  just  about  to  say,  when  you  forgot  yourself, 
Ethel — "  The  jab  was  gentle  and,  if  not  then  necessary, 
might  help  to  reduce  the  dangers  of  a  future  occasion. 
"  I  was  just  about  to  say,  it  seemed  like  to  me  that  the 
whole  thing  was  this :  I  got  a  responsibility  to  you,  Ethel 
— the  biggest  responsibility,  o'  course,  seein's  you're  my 
wife,  and  a  man's  wife  comes  first — I  hope  you'd  agree 
with  that,  Miss  Clotilde?" 

"  Yes— I  would." 

"  And  I  got  another  responsibility  to  this  young  lady 
here.  Now,  the  whole  thing's  how  to  make  them  two 
responsibilities  gibe — tell  me  if  I'm  wrong,  I'm  ready  to 
stand  c'rected  if  I  don't  hit  the  nail  fair  on  the  head !  " 

Efehel  hastily  anticipated  praise  from  another  quarter: 
"  You  do,  Hen — you  hit  it  right  square  on  the  head." 

"  And,  Miss  Clotilde—" 

"  I  ag~gree/'  said  Clotilde,  between  chattering  teeth. 
Truth,  beautiful  and  inviolable  Truth,  had  gone  out  of 
the  proceedings.  The  whole  matter  of  claiming  her 
father  seemed  to  the  tired  and  chilly  girl  to  have 
descended  to  a  sordid,  uninspiriting  plane.  She  fore 
saw  a  haggling  over  details,  compromises,  sickening  com 
promises  and  reservations.  She  was  hungry,  disgusted, 
worn  out ;  she  wanted  to  go  home. 

"  Well,  then — "  Henry  gave  his  new  hat  a  hitch 
forward.  "  I  think  the  best  thing  we  can  all  do  is  just 
to  go  along,  and  think  it  all  over,  sleep  on  it  a  couple 
nights,  then  have  another  talk.  How  about  it?" 

"  Hen's  right !  "  asserted  Ethel. 

"  I  a§"-gree>"  shivered  Clotilde. 

"  I'd  just  like  to  see  you,  Ethel,  shake  hands  with  Miss 
Clotilde  afore  we  go,"  said  the  old  man.  "  You  both 


i8o  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

got  good  heads,  and  I  don't  think  either  of  you's  goin' 
to  worry  too  long  over  by-gones,  once  you  get  your  heads 
to  work.  I  think  you  might's  well  be  friends  right  now 
as  later.  Go  over  there  and  shake  hands  with  her,  Ethel 
— don't  be  bashful — she'll  be  glad  to  have  you — you 
know  I  ginly  give  you  purty  good  advice,  if  I  do  say 
it  myself  as  shouldn't.  Go  on — shake  hands  with  her. 
Might  invite  her  up  to  see  us  some  afternoon  soon,  too, 
seein's  we've  agreed  to  talk  it  all  over  together.  Go  on 
— you  know  the  chores  ain't  done — we'd  rightly  ought  to 
be  movin'  along — go  on,  Ethel !  " 
And  Ethel  did. 

Common  Sense  and  Morality,  looking  like  a  prosperous 
commercial  traveler  and  a  leading  anti-suffragist,  had 
dinner  at  the  Woodbridge  Inn. 

"Awful  botch,  wasn't  it?"  complained  Common 
Sense,  over  the  soup. 

"  Terrible,"  admitted  Morality,  "  even  though  you 
know  I  can't  agree  with  you  as  to  the  cause  of  the  botch." 

"  If  each  of  us — including  poor  dilapidated  Truth — 
could  only  get  one  simon-pure  disciple  and  set  'em  at 
it,  we  might  find  out  something,"  said  Common  Sense. 
"  But,  I  confess,  I  don't  know  where  I  could  lay  my 
hands  on  one.  The  country's  going  to  the  dogs." 

"  Worse  than  the  dogs — to  hell  direct,"  declared 
Morality.  "  My  only  ray  of  hope  is  the  awful  mess  they 
made  of  Truth — and  her  exponent  was  rather  more  of 
a  flivver  than  either  of  ours,  wasn't  she?  Poor  old 
Truth!  She  has  a  harder  time  of  it  than  either  of  us 
more  sensible  and  conventional  divinities  among  these 
preposterous  mortals ! " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  181 

But  Clotilde  had  already  caught  up  with  Truth,  was 
holding  her  hand  in  her  closed  carriage,  making  extrava 
gant  promises  to  her,  and  Truth,  nestling  beneath  her 
eider-down  and  steamer-rug,  was  a  trifle  comforted. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CY  WETMORE  GAVE  A  PARTY,  AND  ALL  THE  BUCKS 
WERE  THERE 

"  EVERYBODY'S  here  now  but  the  Major  and  Arthur 
Kling,"  said  Cy  Wetmore,  jigging  about  in  the  road  in 
front  of  the  house  he  rented  for  a  studio,  jigging  about 
in  company  with  a  score  of  other  bright  young,  middle- 
aged,  and  oldish  men;  the  night  was  chilly,  and  they 
didn't  want  to  enter  Cy's  house,  from  the  front  windows 
of  which  the  lift  and  flicker  of  an  open  fire  beckoned 
good  cheer,  until  the  party  was  complete.  There  are 
some  parties  so  carefully  arranged  that  they  need  to 
burst  full-blown,  without  that  straggling  effect  so  com 
mon  to  less  artistic  parties. 

Oliver  James  remarked:  "Of  course,  Arthur  might 
easily  lose  himself  between  his  home  and  here,  or  forget 
where  he  was  going;  but  it's  queer  about  the  Major. 
He's  usually  so  prompt  to  his  meals." 

"  Oh,  Oliver !  "  called  Jack  Stokes,  in  a  highty-tighty 
voice :  "  do  let  me  slap  you  on  the  wrist !  " 

"  Never — you  might  derange  my  wrist-watch,  you 
brute !  "  objected  Oliver.  He  was  a  slight,  delicate-faced, 
red-headed,  bespectacled  youth,  a  designer  of  tapestries 
for  the  Herter  Looms,  and  an  authority  on  Gobelins. 
Jack  Stokes,  corduroyed,  flannel-shirted,  ruddy-faced  and 
robust  as  a  young  farmhand,  did  landscape  pochades  in 
his  better  hours,  and  designed  linoleum  in  his  worst. 

182 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  183 

"  Cut  out  the  rough  stuff !  "  the  giver  of  the  party 
warned  them;  "  here  comes  a  girl." 

The  girl  came  mincing  up  the  road,  self-consciously 
bobbing  her  head  from  side  to  side  as  she  walked;  she 
wore  a  white  dress,  a  large,  fluffy  hat  of  some  slimpsy 
material  that  sagged  around  her  face,  and  white  shoes 
and  stockings.  Straight  up  to  the  group  of  staring 
youths,  old  and  young,  she  minced.  "  Oh,  boys,  do  you 
think  an  unprotected  little  girl  is  safe  around  Wood- 
bridge  ? "  she  asked,  in  a  squeaky,  falsetto  voice,  putting 
an  embarrassed  forefinger  in  her  mouth. 

"  Goo'  Lord !  "  commented  someone. 

"  Wow — it's  the  Major !  "  announced  someone  else. 

They  guffawed,  and  gathered  around  him.  "  Well,  is 
the  gang  all  here?  "  asked  the  Major,  in  his  natural  husky 
bass.  "  I  suppose  I'm  late — got  here  sooner  if  I  hadn't 
met  old  Eph  Shultis  down  the  road — I  said:"  The 
Major's  voice  took  on  a  mincing  squeak.  " '  Good 
evening  Mr.  Shultis!'  And  simpered  at  him."  The 
Major's  voice  became  natural  again.  "  And  held  out  my 
hand,  and  the  old  buck  stood  there  squeezin'  it,  and  tellin' 
me  he  didn't  exactly  remember  me — Huh-huh !  "  rumbled 
the  Major.  He  hoped  to  be  in  France,  under  Per- 
shing,  by  spring,  in  spite  of  his  fifty-odd  years,  and  the 
rheumatism  started  by  a  bolo  puncture  in  his  shoulder. 
The  party  was  in  the  nature  of  a  farewell  celebration  both 
for  him  and  Wetmore. 

"  Everybody's  here  but  Arthur  Kling,"  announced  Cy; 
"  it's  eight-ten,  and  everybody  was  warned  to  be  on  the 
dot  of  eight  sharp.  I  guess  we'll  go  in." 

"  Forward,  march  1 "  ordered  the  Major. 

They  went  in  through  the  wide,  maple-shaded  lawn  to 


184  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  little  tumbledown  white  cottage  that  had  served  as  a 
studio  for  two  generations  of  Woodbridge  artists.  The 
house  was  near  the  Skuyterkill,  on  the  south  side  of  the 
village,  and  no  houses  were  nearer  than  two  hundred 
yards  on  either  side :  it  was  a  comparatively  proper  place 
for  a  proper  Woodbridge  stag. 

Wetmore  opened  the  front  door.  " Entrez,  mes 
sieurs!  "  he  pronounced,  and  stood  at  attention  on  the 
rickety  little  porch  till  the  last  of  his  guests  had  stromped 
inside.  "  I  call  it  a  house-cleaning  party,"  he  explained, 
following  them.  "  The  idea  is  to  preserve  the  furniture 
— which  I  don't  own." 

There  was  no  furniture  in  the  big  living-room,  neither 
furniture,  carpet,  pictures,  nor  curtains.  Except  for 
one  detail,  the  room  was  as  bare  as  if  prepared  for  a 
conscientious  Woodbridge  house-cleaning.  The  detail 
consisted  of  a  geometrical  arrangement  on  the  worn 
puncheon  floor,  in  front  of  the  fireplace.  A  huge  gal 
vanized  iron  washtub,  new  and  shining,  stood  in  the 
exact  center  of  a  circle  of  bright  new  tin  cups,  twenty- 
two  of  them,  one  for  each  guest.  The  tub  was  full  to 
the  brim  of  liquor,  fiery-red,  on  whose  potent  surface 
floated  several  cakes  of  ice.  The  glancing  firelight 
gleamed  on  this  Brobdignagian  bowl.  Groans,  grunts, 
"  Wows !  "  and  "  Woofs !  "  of  admiration  greeted  the 
achievement.  Never,  since  the  days  of  Rip  Van  Winkle, 
had  such  a  punch  been  set  before  Woodbridge  mortal. 

"  Be  seated,  gentlemen !  "  begged  Cy  Wetmore,  waving 
a  hospitable  hand  at  the  bare  floor:  "  Be  seated,  toss-pots 
and  pantagruelists  all,  and  taste  of  my  cheer! " 

They  sat  down,  in  knickers  and  puttees,  in  corduroy 
and  fehaki  trousers^  in  spats  and  sweaters  and  golf -stock- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  185 

ings  and  patent-leather  pumps,  each  beside  the  tin  cup 
that  marked  his  place  in  the  circle.  The  Major's  cropped 
gray  bullet-head  bent  forward  beside  the  rising  auburn 
locks  of  Ollie  James,  the  spreading  gray  mop  of  the 
hermit-symbolist  towered  between  the  bald  pate  of 
Henry  Partridge,  who  might  have  painted  well  but  for 
too  much  income  combined  with  an  interest  in  racing 
cars,  and  the  neat  brown  coiffure  of  Allan  Brooke,  whose 
snowscapes  were  bound  to  win  him  an  N.  A.  before  he 
was  many  years  older.  Carey  Beemis,  with  the  only  un- 
festive  face  on  view,  sat  with  his  back  to  the  fire.  He 
expected  to  leave,  as  soon  as  things  got  so  boisterous 
that  his  leaving  wouldn't  be  noticed,  be  motored  down 
to  Kingston,  and  take  a  night  train  for  New  York. 

"  The  cheer  looks — rather  terrific,"  mentioned  the 
hermit,  in  his  neat,  precise,  Harvard  English. 

"  What  I'm  wonderin',''  growled  the  Major,  "  'swhere 
Cy  got  the  price.  There  must  be  two  hundred  dollars' 
worth  of  dope  in  that  mess !  " 

There  was  a  certain  animosity  in  the  Major's  frank 
ness.  Cy  Wetmore  looked  up  from  gently  stirring  the 
concoction  with  a  long-handled  dipper.  "  Remembering 
that  it  was  war  times,"  he  announced,  "  I  was  not  ex 
travagant.  Don't  let  your  patriotism  give  you  any 
twinges,  Major.  This  punch — this  supreme  achievement 
in  Woodbridge  punches,  if  I  may  modestly  state  an  evi 
dent  fact — "  He  delicately  allowed  some  of  the  liquor 
to  trickle  from  the  dipper  back  into  the  washtub;  a  scarlet 
froth  appeared.  He  was  a  dapper  young  man,  high  and 
bold  of  forehead,  beady  black  and  twinkling  of  eye,  and 
he  kept  his  cherubic  smile  and  sense  of  humor  despite 
ten  years  of  steady  failure  as  a  cubist.  He  had  enlisted 


1 86  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

in  the  navy,  some  three  months  before;  two  days'  leave 
of  absence  had  enabled  him  to  prepare  a  farewell  party 
to  his  Woodbridge  comrades,  a  party  that  should  be 
memorable  in  the  annals  of  the  village,  if  not  of  the 
country.  He  continued,  intoning  the  words :  "  This 
potent  and  virile  liquor — it  did  not  cost  two  hundred 
dollars — nor  a  hundred — nor  yet  fifty.  I  will  not  tell 
you  how  much  it  cost — I  will  only  say  that  it  is  a  truly 
war-time  and  economical  punch;  its  flavor,  its  ability  to 
deliver  the  goods,  I  leave  entirely  to  your  individual  and 
composite  judgments." 

He  poured  again,  creating  more  scarlet  froth. 
"Major — let  me  have  your  cup;  I  think  it  is  ready," 
he  said,  and  his  announcement  had  such  an  air  of 
solemnity  that  no  heart  in  that  assemblage  but  beat  the 
faster  for  it. 

In  dead  silence  he  filled  the  Major's  cup,  till  the  beaded 
ripples  were  winking  at  the  brim :  dextrously,  in  further 
silence  that  his  air  of  solemnity  intensified,  he  filled  the 
other  cups. 

"  A  toast !  "  he  proclaimed,  rising  from  his  knees  where 
he  had  devotionally  performed  the  service  of  cup-bearer, 
holding  his  flashing  tin  goblet  high  above  his  head,  sudden 
ardor  on  his  firelit  face.  "  The  democratic  army  and 
navy  of  the  United  States  of  America!  Bottoms 
up!" 

The  upraised  cup  swept  downward  in  a  semicircle; 
he  drank,  face  upturned,  his  slim  white  throat  gulping. 
A  thrill  went  through  the  assembly. 

"That's  a  toast  that's  got  to  be  drunk  standing!" 
snapped  the  Major,  with  the  gruff  finality  of  a  military 
command,  and  scrambled  to  his  feet.  The  others  fol- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  187 

lowed,  some  hesitating,  more  carried  away.  The  Major 
looked  doubtfully  at  the  scarlet  half-pint  of  stuff  in  his 
hand,  looked  with  doubt  that  lasted  only  while  Jack 
Stokes  could  shout,  "  That's  a  toast  I'd  drink  in  prussic 
acid !  "  raised  it  to  his  lips,  and  drank.  The  others  fol 
lowed,  some  precipitate,  others  lagging  but  grim  and 
determined,  like  raw  soldiers  going  over  the  top;  all 
except  the  hermit.  Nothing  could  stampede  his  placid 
opinions.  After  a  series  of  parties  the  chief  ingredient 
of  which  it  had  been  the  giver's  aim  to  make  a  nearer 
approximation  of  liquid  fire  than  any  previous  giver's, 
the  hermit,  good  patriot  that  President  Wilson  and  Prus- 
sianism  had  made  out  of  his  pacifism,  was  minded  to  go 
slow.  He  tasted  his  cup;  a  look  of  relief,  of  pleased 
surprise  overspread  his  bearded  face,  and  he  drank  the 
rest  with  a  right  good  will. 

"Gr-uff!"  growled  the  Major,  finishing  his  beaker, 
getting  the  flavor  of  it.  Faint  surprise,  pleased  or  other 
wise,  showed  on  his  round  face.  It  was  repeated,  with 
individual  variations,  on  the  faces  of  the  rest. 

Cy  Wetmore  stood  dangling  his  cup,  politely  waiting 
for  the  verdict.  There  was  a  general  turning  of  eyes 
toward  the  Major.  He  was  a  recognized  connoisseur. 

"  Uh-uff !  "  he  said,  after  suitable  time  spent  in  delib 
eration.  "  I  guess  I've  got  it.  Just  let  me — "  He 
strode  forward  and  dipped  up  another  cupful  of  the 
stuff.  " — make  sure."  He  drank  half  the  cup  in  slow 
mouthfuls,  rolling  it  over  his  experienced  tongue. 
"Hasheesh!"  He  turned  to  the  hermit.  "Right, 
Alfred?" 

"  It  has  the  faintly  bitterish  flavor — "  admitted  the 
hermit. 


1 88  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Uh — what  was — "  hesitated  Jack  Stokes. 

"Hasheesh!"  The  Major  was  not  accustomed  to 
explanations.  "  It  used  to  raise  hell  over  in  the  Philip 
pines.  It's  got  other  stuff  in  it,  but  it's  the  hash  thatr 
gives  it  the  kick.  Notice  the  effect  ?"  He  looked  around 
the  circle  of  variously  blank  or  enlightened  faces. 

"  It  gives  you  a  cold  feeling — in  the  pit  of  the 
stomach,"  submitted  Allan  Brooke  respectfully. 

"  That's  it !  Cold  in  the  stomach,  and  round  the  heart 
— first  effect,"  the  Major  elucidated.  "  Then — extraordi 
nary  vividness  of  sensation — alcohol's  nothing  to  it. 
After  'bout  six  or  eight  hours  you  go  to  sleep  for  a 
week — or  for  longer  if  you  got  a  weak  heart.  Guess 
there  must  a-been  hasheesh  in  the  stuff  Rip  Van  Winkle 
got  poured  into  him  somewhere  round  in  these  Catskills 
— congratulate  you,  Cy!  But  it's  no  stuff  for  a  weak 
heart."  The  Major  scooped  up  another  cupful.  "  Now 
I  want  to  give  you  a  toast,  one  that  should  a-come  first 
— not  knocking  Wetmore,  who's  only  a  civilian — Fill  up, 
dip  into  the  tank — the  dipper's  too  slow.  Fill  up !  " 

While  they  filled  up,  still  with  varying  degrees  of 
doubt,  Cy  Wetmore  put  in :  "I  ought  to  tell  you  fellows, 
since  I  see  some  of  you  looking  doubtful,  that  I  con 
sulted  five  physicians — count  'em,  five — four  in  Kingston, 
and  one  here — before  I  mixed  this  concoction — and  they 
all  agreed  a  gallon  of  it  wouldn't  hurt  an  infant.  The 
proportion  of  hasheesh  is  so  slight  that — " 

"  What  do  any  o'  these  backwoods  saw-bones  know 
about  hasheesh?"  interrupted  the  Major:  he  had  been 
brevetted  a  Colonel,  but  he  preferred  the  familiar  Major, 
modest  man  that  he  was  in  all  but  his  opinions.  "  You 
got  enough  in  there  for  a  mule-size  kick — that's  all  we 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  189 

care  about.  Ready,  boys?  I  give  you — President  o' 
these  United  States!" 

Truth,  that  survives  even  at  the  bottom  of  a  well, 
surmounted  even  the  Major's  ridiculous  girl-costume, 
rose  resplendent  above  his  solid  gray  head — the  truth 
about  that  roomful's  feeling  for  their  chosen  commander. 
They  did  not  cheer:  they  set  their  faces  grimly,  lifted 
their  exotic  concoction  as  if  it  had  been  nobler  stuff,  held 
their  shining  cups  in  a  high  circle,  until,  following  the 
Major's  lead,  they  put  the  brims  to  their  lips  and  drank 
off  the  draft. 

"  Of  course,  we're  just  here  to  have  one  last  good  hell 
of  a  time,"  explained  the  Major,  answering  a  widespread 
demand,  "  knowin'  that  we  may  not  see  each  other  again 
for  a  while,  anyway."  He  had,  in  an  emotional  moment, 
expressed  the  hope  that  he  might  leave  his  old  bones  in 
the  soil  of  France,  and,  somehow,  the  knowledge  of  that 
had  got  around.  "  But  we're  the  better  for  a  couple  of 
serious  toasts.  Just  the  same,  there's  plenty  of  serious 
stuff  comin'  to  all  of  us — to  those  of  us  that  stay,  as  well 
as  to  those  that  go.  Let's  all  sit  down  again,  and  drink 
one,  bottoms  up,  to  good  old  Woodbridge,  and  have  a 
song  or  two."  He  dipped  his  cup  in  the  unlowered  flood 
of  iced  scarlet,  kicked  up  his  skirts  at  the  hermit,  ballet- 
dancer  fashion,  and  sat  down.  "  Excuse  me,  Wetmore — 
seems  I  been  kinda  usurpin'  your  pr'ogatives,"  he  apolo 
gized,  with  sudden  contrition,  across  the  punch  bowl. 

"  I  want  you  to  feel  this  is  your  party,  as  well  as 
mine,  Major,"  said  Wetmore,  considerably  moved. 
"  You  be  toastmaster." 

"  Wetmore's  a  fine  fellow,"  Jack  Stokes  informed 
Bruno,  the  sculptor. 


190  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Never  knew  a  finer;  and,  say,  the  Major's  got  the 
right  stuff  in  him,  too,  hasn't  he? "  said  Bruno. 

"  The  Major — let's  make  our  next  toast  the  Major !  " 
bellowed  Henry  Partridge,  overhearing  them. 

"  Ya-ya !  "  ascended  the  chorus  of  assent.  "  The 
Major!" 

"Did  somebody  say  this  stuff  didn't  have  a  kick?" 
grumbled  the  Major.  "  Crazy  all  ready !  But  it's 
nothin'  to  what's  comin' !  Wetmore  showed  intelligence 
to  remove  the  furniture."  He  complained,  raising  his 
voice  above  the  hubbub :  "  No — Woodbridge  first — then 
Wetmore — " 

"No,  the  Major!"  "But  Woodb'idge— dea'  ole 
Woodb'idge— "  "The  Major!"  "  Whichever  one  we 
drink,  it's  got  to  be  drunk  standin' — it's  no  toast  to 
sit  down  to !  "  "  Right-oh !  Everybody  up !  "  "  The 
Major!"  "Ya-ya!" 

They  tramped  on  the  bare  floor  to  make  a  noise,  getting 
to  their  feet,  crowding  around  to  dip  into  the  washtub- 
ful  of  flat-tasting,  bitterish  liquor.  Already  they  had 
reached  the  furniture-endangering  stage.  The  house 
shook  with  their  exhilarated  altercation.  Someone  threw 
a  tin  cup  against  the  stone  front  of  the  fireplace. 

"  Hasheesh — wonderful  stuff,"  commented  the  Major 
to  his  bosom  friend,  the  hermit,  looking  them  over  with 
the  eye  of  an  expert.  "  We  gotta  be  ready  to  jump  in 
if  they  start  smashing  each  other  up — hasheesh  is  hell 
on  the  combative  instincts.  Prussians  give  it  to  their 
soldiers,  y'know." 

"Do  they?"  commented  the  hermit,  genially  amused, 
screeching  a  little  to  be  heard  above  the  uproar. 

"  Calm    down,    fellows,    calm    down ! "    advised    the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  191 

sculptor,  Bruno,  in  his  voice  of  bass  and  thunder;  it 
was  the  chorus  of  most  Woodbridge  stags,  an  incentive 
to  larger  effort. 

"  Hey — we'll  put  it  to  a  vote! "  yelled  Wetmore,  get 
ting  attention  by  violence  of  voice  and  violent  waving  of 
his  arms.  "  All  in  favor  of  the  Major  signify  by  saying, 
'Aye!'"  The  "Ayes"  loosened  the  plaster  on  the 
walls.  "  It's  the  Major !  "  decreed  Wetmore,  starting  a 
fresh  outburst.  He  dodged  over,  caught  the  Major  by 
the  arm,  and  dragged  him  to  the  vicinity  of  the  punch 
bowl.  "  I  give  you — "  he  raised  his  cup  and  paused 
until  a  few  yowls  of  enthusiasm  had  subsided.  "  I  give 
you  Woodbridge's  best  poet,  best  artificer  of  metals,  best 
fighter — the  Major!  " 

They  drank,  guggling  with  their  suppressed  noise-crea 
tors,  and  let  loose  with  a  roar  when  their  third  half -pint 
of  Woodbridge's  largest,  hardest-hitting  punch  had  gone 
to  join  the  other  two.  "  What's  the  matter  with  the 
Major?"  they  all  demanded  at  once,  and  shrieked  the 
obvious  answer. 

"  It's  the  hasheesh,"  explained  the  Major,  deeply 
moved,  to  the  sculptor.  "  See  how  it  hits — quick  as  a 
flash?" 

"  It  does  seem  to  be  pretty  potent,"  admitted  the  sculp 
tor.  "  I  don't  think  I  can  stand  much  more  of  it." 

The  Major  suggested:  "  Pour  it  out  the  window  if  it's 
too  strong  for  you." 

"  I've  tried  both  windows — they're  nailed  down,"  ex 
plained  the  sculptor;  he  was  a  sober,  righteous,  hard 
working  young  man,  even  though  his  wife  was  an 
analytical  chemist  in  New  York,  with  only  week-ends  at 
home. 


192  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

The  Major  chuckled.  "  I  reckon  Cy  didn't  want  any 
of  his  stuff  to  go  out  without  first  goin'  in,"  he  surmised. 
"  Wow ! "  he  added  abruptly,  widening  his  usually  small 
mouth  till  it  extended  from  ear  to  ear,  opening  and  shut 
ting  it  like  a  large,  thirsty  fish  regretting  absence  of 
water.  "  Wow,  wow !  " 

"  Ooh — wow !  "  responded  the  sober  and  righteous 
young  man,  at  once  infected  with  the  Major's  complaint. 
"  Well,  it  does  a  fellow  good  to  loosen  up  once  in  a 
while—" 

"  Where's  a  kitchen  chair?  "  demanded  a  high-pitched, 
excited  voice,  above  the  general  din  of  wowing,  mutual 
agreement  that  it  did  fellows  good  to  loosen  up  once 
in  a  while,  and  exclamation  over  the  potency  of  the  flat- 
tasting,  utterly  remarkable  infusion  of  hasheesh.  "  Aw, 
have  a  drink !  "  suggested  several  voices. 

"  Kitchen  chair !  "  insisted  the  possessor  of  the  high- 
pitched,  excited  voice:  he  was  Amos  Frink,  they  made 
out — T.  Amos  Frink,  as  he  signed  his  pictures,  a  fine 
solid  youth  with  the  chest  and  upper  arms  of  a  young 
Hercules.  "  I  gotta  have  a  kitchen  chair — Brooke's  bet 
me  a  dollar  a  kitchen  chair  won't  go  through  that  side 
window ! " 

"Hey,  a  bet!"  "Shut  up— what's  going  on!" 
"  Sure,  it'll  go  through — what — a  kitchen  chair  ?  "  "  It 
will  not — you  don't  know  how  narrow  they  made  the 
windows  of  these  old  houses."  "  Well,  I'll  bet  you  a 
dollar  it  won't !  "  "  Kitchen  chair !  "  insisted  Amos, 
prowling  about  the  room.  "  Where's  that  kitchen  door — 
hey,  Cy — where's  the  door — where  you  got  your  kitchen 
chairs  ?  " 

"  Right  this  way — I  loaded  all  the  furniture  into  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  193 

kitchen,"  Wetmore  obligingly  informed  him,  torn  from 
an  argument  as  to  the  relation  of  hasheesh  and  opium 
with  the  badly  informed  but  inquisitive  Jack  Stokes. 
The  rest  of  them  trooped  after  him  and  Amos.  Two 
or  three  adventurous  spirits,  noting  the  little  angular 
stairway  leading  up  from  a  corner  of  the  kitchen,  pro 
ceeded  upward  to  see  what  they  could  see. 

With  the  kitchen  chair — they  chose  one  containing  a 
small  oil  stove  without  bothering  to  remove  the  stove — 
Amos  returned  to  the  living  room.  He  put  the  chair 
and  stove  down  some  six  feet  from  the  shut  and  nailed 
window,  took  off  his  sweater,  and  proceeded  to  roll 
up  his  shirt  sleeves  over  his  bronzed  and  brawny 
arms. 

"  Shall  I  open  the  window  for  you  ? — only  a  few 
nails — "  offered  Wetmore  politely. 

"  The  idea,"  explained  Amos,  additionally  exhilarated 
by  being  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes,  "  Cy  is  to  put  the  chair 
through  the  window.  Now,  I'm  goin'  to  put  the  oil  stove 
through  along  with  it — just  for  good  measure!  " 

The  idea,  which  evidently  didn't  involve  any  prelimi 
nary  opening  of  the  window,  penetrated  the  gaping  circle 
of  onlookers,  and  drew  enthusiastic  whoops.  While  the 
whoops  were  still  in  progress,  there  came  a  clatter  as  of 
an  explosion  in  a  tin  factory  from  the  direction  of  the 
kitchen;  the  three  adventurers  reappeared  from  the  upper 
regions,  bearing  numerous  tin  pans,  executing  a  war 
dance,  making  barbarous  sounds  suitable  to  a 
stag. 

"  My  landlord's  sap  pans,"  explained  Cy  Wetmore 
philosophically,  to  the  hermit. 

"  Oh,  don't  worry — we'll  take  up  a  collection  tomorrow 


194  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

to  defray  damages — as  usual,"  the  hermit  reassured 
him. 

"  Stop  the  jamboree !  "  bawled  Amos,  with  some  irrita 
tion.  "  This  bet  has  got  to  be  decided  first." 

"  Amos  is  going  to  put  the  chair,  with  the  oil  stove  in 
it,  through  the  window — Brooke  bet  him  a  dollar  he 
couldn't,"  explained  Ollie  James,  to  the  three  returning 
discoverers.  Carey  Beemis  was  one  of  them;  his  face 
had  lost  its  drawn  look;  he  was  quite  drunk,  and  happy. 

Amos  went  on  with  his  preparations.  He  tried  lifting 
the  chair  by  the  back,  with  his  hands  near  the  top  of  the 
curved  wooden  upright.  "  That's  good !  "  he  announced. 
"  Gives  me  a  swing,  that  does !  Say,  are  you  a'ready  ?  " 

"A'ready!"  "Sure,  go  to  it!"  "You  can  do  it, 
Amos ! "  "  Look  out,  Amy,  or  the  stove'll  fall  on  your 
head !  "  "  Yla-hoo — Ya-hoo — all  ready  for  the  big 
show !  "  "  You  got  a  glass  arm,  Amy — you  can't  even 
hit  the  window !  " 

"  Don't  bother  me — stand  back !  "  bawled  Amos.  "  I 
can  do  it — though  I'd  like  to  bet  another  dollar  there 
isn't  another  man  in  the  room  can." 

He  looked  around;  there  were  no  takers.  Carey 
Beemis,  waving  his  tin  sap  pan,  rolled  up  to  him.  "  Wait 
— it'll  be  a  strain,  o'  man !  "  He  held  out  a  brimming 
cupful  of  punch.  "  Have  'nother  drink  before  you  try !  " 

"  Goo'  idea !  "  admitted  Amos,  accepting  the  punch. 

"  Here's  to  Amos — and  may  he  put  'er  through !  " 
toasted  some  pro-Amos  enthusiast,  and  everybody  drank. 
"  Here's  to  that  tough  old  window — may  it  resist  the 
attack  on  its  virtue!"  toasted  some  anti-Amos-ite,  and 
everybody  drank  that,  too. 

" Le's  have  a  song!     Major,  make  us  up  a  song!" 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  195 

shouted  Cy,  perhaps  harboring  unworthy  thoughts  of  sav 
ing  the  window,  and  the  resultant  expense. 

"  Song — song — Ya-hoo !  " 

"  Wait  till  I  put  'er  through !  "  objected  Amos,  waving 
both  arms. 

"  Ya-hoo-hoo !  Song !  "  "  Let  it  go  till  after  we  have 
a  song  or  two  and  a  few  more  drinks — you'll  be 
all  the  stronger,  Amy !  "  "  Sure — song — Ya-hoo !  " 
"  Everybody  quiet."  "  The  Major — cut  out  the  noise, 
fellows — the  Major's  goin'  to  make  us  up  a  song!" 
"  Here's  another,  bottoms  up,  to  dea'  ole  Woo'bidge  while 
we're  waitin' !  " 

They  heterogeneously  drank,  bellowed  "  Woo'b'idge !  " 
"  Song !  "  and  "  Ya-hoo !  "  and  watched  the  preparations 
of  the  Major.,  The  Major,  sitting  cross-legged  like  a 
Turk  near  the  punch-bowl,  began  to  compose;  he  had 
collected  the  long-handled  dipper,  made  useless  by  more 
expeditious  methods  in  dealing  with  the  punch,  and 
a  sap  pan.  As  he  composed,  in  stolid  disregard  of  the 
din  around  him,  he  hummed  through  his  nose,  and 
pounded  with  the  dipper  on  the  pan. 

"  Hey — I  got  it !  "  he  shouted,  waving  his  dipper  in 
the  air. 

They  at  once  Ya-hoo-ed  themselves  into  silence. 

"  I'll  give  you  the  words,  then  we  can  all  sing  it  to 
gether,"  he  said;  and  produced  the  Woodbridge  form 
of  limerick  which  he  had  originated  for  the  purpose  of 
taking  off  familiar  Woodbridgians  at  stags.  "  It's  on 
cutey,  over  there,"  he  announced,  with  a  fishy  grin  at 
Oliver  James,  the  trim  and  delicately  sissified  authority 
on  Gobelins.  He  gave  out,  beating  time  with  the  dipper 
on  the  pan: 


196  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  We'll  sing  a  song  of  sweetness, 
Of  concentrated  neatness, 
Of  manicures  to  cleanse  our  nails  and  sins: 
With  baths  and  toe-corn  freezers, 
With  soap  and  mustache-tweezers, 
Our  Ollie  beats  the  Gold  Dust  Twins ! " 

"Wow!  Wow!  Whoop-la!  Ya-hoo!"  they  ap 
plauded,  and  began  to  roar  it  in  twenty-one  different 
sharps  and  flats.  On  tin  pans  they  swelled  the  chorus, 
and  with  tin  pans  they  beat  the  blushing  Ollie  over  the 
head.  Tin  pans  flew  against  the  fireplace  front,  and 
walls,  knocking  off  plaster.  One  adventurous  spirit 
threw  his  tin  pan  against  a  window,  breaking  out  a  pane. 
Other  volleyed  pans  immediately  took  flight,  breaking 
out  all  the  remaining  panes. 

Fortunately  it  was  one  of  the  large  front  windows,  not 
the  narrower  side  one,  through  which  there  was  a  bet  up 
that  Amos  Frink  couldn't  throw  a  kitchen  chair;  how 
ever,  one  window,  all  windows,  was  the  rule;  Amos, 
realizing  this  certain  procedure,  got  in  front  of  his  win 
dow  in  time  to  stop  several  tin-pan  attempts  on  it,  one 
with  his  nose. 

"  Stop,  fellows — have  a  heart !  "  he  begged  frantically, 
so  concerned  to  have  a  whole  window  for  his  prowess 
that  he  didn't  notice  the  accident  to  his  nose.  "  Cy — 
for  God's  sake,  Cy — stop  'em!  This  is  my  window! 
Where's  Cy—stop  'em,  Cy!  " 

Cy  responded  to  this  pathetic  appeal;  a  heart  of  stone 
could  have  done  no  less. 

"  Sure,  it's  Amy's  window,  fellows — have  a  heart !  " 
Cy  told  them,  with  dignity,  taking  his  stand  in  front 
of  the  tormented  Amy;  Amy,  stretched  out  in  front  of  his 
window,  looked  relieved.  "  Andromache  facing  the  Sea 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  197 

Monster,"  commented  the  hermit,  nodding  at  the  win 
dow's  protector.  Being  mostly  artists,  they  recognized 
a  caricature  on  a  famous  canvas,  and  roared  approval. 

"  One  window  goes,  all  windows  go ! "  howled  Jack 
Stokes,  waving  a  pan. 

"Ya-hoo-hoo-Ya!" 

"  Now,  children — now,  nice  boys — good  little  Sunday- 
school  scholars!  "  Cy  chided  them,  in  his  loudest  bellow. 
"  Wait — listen !  "  The  racket  subsided  a  few  degrees. 
"  Let  Amy  have  his  window — let's  be  fair  to  Amy," 
pleaded  Cy.  "  Be  good  little  boys — and  as  a  reward — 
we'll  soon  have  a  nice  bonfire  in  the  front  yard!  We 
will  make  the  bonfire  out  of  the  front  porch — I  never 
cared  for  the  front  porch,  anyway." 

"  It  really  isn't  artistic,  you  know,"  said  Ollie  James. 

"  All  I  ask,"  continued  Cy,  after  the  outburst  of  plaudi- 
tory  Ya-hoos  had  subsided,  "  is,  that  you  don't  burn  the 
house  down.  I  don't  think  we  ought  to  burn  the  house 
down." 

"  Oh,  no — of  course  not !  "  chirped  Ollie. 

"  We  must  remove  the  porch  before  burning  it,"  said 
Cy.  "  I  will  supply  axes  and  crowbars  for  the  purpose. 
And  now — allow  me  to  introduce  Amy  Frink,  in  his 
death-defying  feat  of  putting  a  kitchen  chair,  and  an  oil 
stove — note  the  oil  stove,  gentlemen — you  are  not  likely 
to  see  it  looking  so  well  again,  and  I  don't  know  how 
I'll  cook  my  breakfast  tomorrow  morning — not  that 
it  matters — " 

"  You  fellows  just  give  me  a  minute — say,  honest,  now, 
give  me  a  fair  chance !  "  pleaded  Amos,  from  his  window. 

"We'll  try  to  restrain  our  natural  instincts,  Amy!" 
"  Sure,  Amy — you  got  a  suspicious  disposition !  "  "  Get 


i98  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

out  o'  the  way,  Amy — let's  have  a  look  at  the  old  win 
dow — just  a  look!"  they  rallied  him. 

Amy  thought  better  of  leaving  his  window;  he  was 
beginning  to  be  irritated.  "  Any  fellow  that  throws  a 
pan  at  that  window — "  he  began,  goaded  to  desperation 
by  the  poising  of  several  missiles,  ready  to  let  fly  as  soon 
as  he  should  remove  himself.  They  drowned  him  out  in 
a  delighted  chorus  of  Boo's  and  Ya-hoos.  "  Amy's  got 
an  evening's  job — posing  before  his  window,"  commented 
the  hermit  to  the  sculptor. 

The  Major  in  the  meantime  had  cornered  Cy  Wet- 
more  to  impart  a  few  confidences;  the  Major  had  reached 
a  state  of  repletion  with  assorted  confidences  that  he  was 
anxious  to  impart. 

"  I  think  you  ought  to  know,  Cy,"  mentioned  the 
Major,  in  an  intimate  bellow,  "  that  you  did  a  foolish 
thing,  suggestin'  burnin'  the  porch." 

"  Oh,  I  kinda  thought — might  add  a  touch  to  evenin's 
festivities,"  apologized  Cy,  in  the  same  intimate  over 
tone. 

"  Bad — pre'  bad — you  got  to  take  into  c'nsid'ration 
effect  o'  suggestion!"  stormed  the  Major.  "Hasheesh 
— it's  pre'  live  stuff  when  a  fellow  isn't  used  to  it,  Cy. 
Bythway,  in  c'nf'dence,  Cy,  hope  I  didn't  hurt  your 
feelin's,  blurtin'  out  what  it  was,  right  off  the  bat?  " 

"  I  had  intended  to  keep  'em  in  the  dark  a  little  longer," 
admitted  Cy,  showing  signs  of  being  deeply  moved;  "  but 
it's  awright,  Major;  anything  you  do's  awright  with  me, 
Major!" 

"  Well,  now,  thankee,  Cy — it  does  me  good  to  hear 
you  say  it — if  it  hadn't  been  I'd  had  some  'sperience, 
some  little  'sperience,  Cy,  with  hasheesh — in  the  Phil'- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  199 

pines,  y'know — you'd  akep'  us  all  guessin'  indefinite. 
But  they  was  suthin'  else  I  wanted  to  suggest — suthin' 
else,  in  stric'es'  c'nf 'dence — now  what  was  it,  uh  ?  "  The 
Major  looked  grave  and  worried. 

Cy  shook  his  head;  vocal  reply  would  have  been 
useless  against  the  uproar  caused  by  another  attempt,  on 
the  part  of  Amos,  to  leave  his  window,  to  get  over  to 
the  chair  that  he  wanted  to  put  through  it.  He  got 
back,  guarding  his  fragile  property  with  his  body,  just 
in  time  to  stop  several  sailing  sap  pans.  "Cy!"  he 
wailed,  wildly  wailed,  and  threatened:  "Where's  Cy? 
Cy,  if  you  don't  make  these  Yahoos  let  my  window 
alone,  I'm  goin'  to  break  some  of  'em  in  tzvo!" 

"  Aw,  don'  mind  Amy,"  the  Major  advised  Cy,  in 
strictest  confidence,  buttonholing  him.  "  Jus'  'membered 
what  it  was — what  I  wanted  to  tell  you.  You'n  I  ought 
to  get  together  few  others  not  'fected  too  much  by  your 
punch — and  it's  sure  the  punch  with  the  punch,  Cy — huh- 
huh — and  see  they  don't  burn  the  house  down.  That 
was  bad  s'gestion  you  gave,  just  mentionin'  it.  Bad 
s'gestion — few  people  realize  power  s'gestion — specially 
backed  up  by  a  shot  or  two  o'  hasheesh !  I'll  bet  they  don't 
stop  till  they  burn  this  old  house  to  the  ground,  Cy !  " 

"  Oh — I  hardly  think — "  stammered  Cy,  almost 
shocked  into  sobriety. 

"Hasheesh — s'gestion — by  gorry, — say,  is  they  any 
'surance  on  the  old  shack?  " 

"  Yes — I  think  so — few  hun'red  dollars.  But  could 
it  be  c'llected,  Major,  if  we  burned  it  down?  " 

The  Major  looked  serious.  "  That's  w'at  I'm  a-gettin' 
at,  Cy.  It's  gotta  be  done  by  accident.  I  think  we 
'gree  they's  argyments  in  favor  of  doin'  it,  Cy?" 


200  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Uh — well — "  hesitated  Cy,  somewhat  muddled. 

"'Think  o'  the  bla-aze!"  The  Major  waved  his  hand, 
blazes  lighting  up  his  round  phiz.  "  Think  o'  the  mony- 
ment  to — to  your  party,  Cy !  We've  never  yet  burned  a 
house  down  at  a  stag,  Cy — even  at  Brooke's  blowout 
we  saved  the  house!  We  gotta  attain  a  climax,  Cy — it 
might's  well  be  now — last  stag — some  of  us  may  never 
be  at  'nother  Woo'b'idge  stag,  Cy !  " 

"It's  true,  Major — it's  gospel  truth!"  admitted  Cy, 
moved  almost  to  tears.  He  put  his  hand  on  the  Major's 
shoulder,  the  light  of  a  great  and  burning  decision  was 
in  his  eyes.  "  We'll  do  it,  Major — we'll  burn  'er  to  the 
ground !  " 

"  I  knew  you'd  see  it  right."  Now  that  the  great  de 
cision  had  been  made,  the  Major's  head  bowed  beneath 
a  weight  of  grim,  inexorable  determination.  "  Nothin' 
else  would  justify  that  punch — that  hash  punch  of  yours, 
Cy — that  grand  achievement — and,  contrariwise,  that 
punch  would  justify  nothin'  less.  We  got  to  have  a 
holocaust!  They's  such  a  thing  as  artistic  ensemble, 
Cy!" 

"  They  is,  Major — 'swhat  I've  strove  for — without 
success — years'n  years !  " 

"  It'll  be  a  memory  to  carry  away — this  party,  Cy ! 
When  you  feel  the  cold  water  of  the  Channel  closin'  in 
on  you — torpedoed — goin'  down  by  your  gun  as  you'll 
do,  Cy — I  know  you,  boy — " 

"  Major — if  I  don't  come  back,  you'll  know,  all  of  you 
will  know — I  didn't — disgrace  ole  Woo'b'idge !  " 

"  It  goes  without  sayin',  boy,  it  goes  without  sayin' !  " 

They  were  silent,  full  of  true  and  deep  emotion,  in  the 
midst  of  a.  renewed  outburst  and  infernal  racket  precipj- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  201 

tated  by  Amy's  fifth  attempt  to  leave  his  window.  Carey 
Beemis  kindly  brought  him  another  cup  of  punch  to  keep 
his  spirits  up.  Amy  consumed  it,  keeping  a  distracted 
eye,  the  eye  of  a  mother  hen  whose  chickens  are  threat 
ened  by  a  dozen  shrieking  hawks,  on  his  tormentors. 

Ollie  James,  after  a  period  of  retirement  in  one  corner, 
appeared,  announcing  shrilly :  "  I  got  a  limerick,  fel 
lows — on  the  Major!  Hey,  anybody  wanta  hear  my 
limerick  ?  " 

Nobody  was  much  interested.  "  Soapy  Ollie !  "  "  Go 
down  to  the  brook,  Ollie,  and  have  a  bath — there's  soap 
and  sapolio  in  the  kitchen !  "  "  Get  a  manicurist  for 
Ollie."  "  Hey — the  Major's  a  girl — he'd  make  a  fine 
manicurist  for  Ollie !  "  "  Major — Ollie  wants  you  to 
manicure  his  nails !  "  "  Squeeze  his  hand  a  little,  while 
you're  doin'  it,  uh,  Major?  " 

Ollie  discovered  the  Major,  and  shouted  out  his 
limerick : 

"  Our  Major  is  not  scary — 
At  home  he'll  never  tarry 
While  Germany  is  teasing  U.  S.  A. 
But  how'll  the  Major  bear  a 
Army  dry  as  the  Sahara, 
With  lemonade  and  Woo'b'idge  far  away?" 

The  Major,  resisting  renewed  demands  that  he  mani 
cure  Ollie  at  once,  drew  the  youth  aside  to  impart  a  con 
fidence.  The  Major  was  full  of  confidences. 

"  That's  a  purty  good  limerick,  for  all  none  of  'em 
noticed  it,  a  purty  good  limerick,  boy,"  the  Major  con 
fided  to  him. 

"  Uh — thank  you,  Major,"  Ollie  responded,  glad  to 
escape  manicuring. 


202  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  But  I  jus'  wanta  tell  you,  strictes'  conf'dence,  Ollie," 
the  Major  continued,  "  that  I  don't  'predate  references  to 
my  fondness  for  strong  drink — not  but  what  I  may  'a' 
deserved  'em,  from  time  to  time,  Ollie." 

"  But,  Major,  'twas  only  a  joke — "  apologized  Ollie, 
delicately  pink  for  regret  as  a  newly  washed  infant.  "  I 
wasn't  intimatin' — " 

The  Major  declared :  "  In  strictes'  conf'dence,  Ollie, 
I'm  proud  an'  glad  the  Army's  dry  as  the  Sahara — fiot 
a  drop  o'  anything  stronger'n  water'll  pass  my  lips  after 
I  get  into  harness  again,  Ollie !  Not  a  drop !  " 

"  Sure  not,  Major:  I  was  only — " 

Amy  Frink  came  charging  into  their  vicinity,  a  com 
bination  of  full-back  bucking  the  line  and  prize  fighter 
run  amuck.  In  warding  off  a  tin  pan  bound  for  his 
nose,  Amy  had  overlooked  another  one  simultaneously 
bound  for  his  stomach.  Patience  could  bear  no  more; 
he  charged,  the  crowd  scattered,  scattered  at  least  as 
far  as  the  Major  and  Ollie,  who  were  too  much  occupied 
with  the  subject  of  prohibition  to  note  the  approach  of 
danger. 

Amy  collided  with  Ollie,  seized  Ollie  in  the  neigh 
borhood  of  the  belt,  and  over  they  went.  The  punch 
bowl  received  them,  at  least  the  upper  half  of  each  of 
them,  with  Ollie  in  the  position  of  greatest  danger  and 
wetness. 

"  Hey — stop  it !  "  The  Major,  meeting  the  emergency, 
dived  for  collars,  brought  Amy  out,  threw  him  back 
ward  onto  the  floor,  brought  Ollie  up,  supported  his  slight 
figure  upright,  dribbling  streamlets  of  rich  red  punch  on 
the  floor. 

"What  you  doin' — mind  your  stepj  "  bellowed  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  203 

Major,  glaring  at  Amy;  Amy  sat  and  sputtered  and 
gasped  in  the  midst  of  a  hilariously  admiring  circle.  "  If 
it  had  been  anybody  but  Ollie,  you  might  a-spoiled  the 
punch!"  roared  the  Major.  "  Ollie's  sanitary — had  a 
bawth — this  very  mornin' — soaped  all  over,  didn't  you, 
Ollie?  "  demanded  the  Major,  shaking  the  youth  to  make 
him  speak. 

"  Goo' — goo'  gracious !  "  sputtered  Ollie. 

"  See,  he  says  yes ! "  The  Major  released  him,  and 
gave  his  attention  to  the  endangered  punch.  He  scooped 
up  a  pint  or  two  in  a  tin  sap  pan — the  tin  cups  had  been 
generally  discarded  in  favor  of  the  more  capacious  pans 
— and  tasted  it. 

'  'Sail  right !  "  he  announced.  "  Tastes  a  trifle  soapy 
—that's  all!  Ollie,  you  ought  to  use  more  water  in 
rinsin'  off!  Not  but  what  we  ought  to  be  thankful  it 
was  a  nice  sanitary  person  like  yourself — s'pose  Alfred 
had  gone  in?  "  He  turned  toward  the  hermit.  Bellows 
of  approval,  yowls  and  howls  and  hee-haws  of  appre 
ciation  rewarded  him — the  hermit,  Ollie,  everybody. 
Pans  dipped  into  the  remaining  twenty  gallons  of  punch, 
lips  tasted,  voices  commented :  "  Say,  no  joke — it  does 
taste  a  little  soapy — just  a  little,  but  really — soapy ! " 
"Aw,  come  off!"  "No — no  joke — taste  it  slow!" 
"  Say — maybe  it  does — or  is  it  just  our  imagination?" 
"Power  o'  s'gestion — and  hasheesh!"  put  in  the 
Major,  commanding  the  uproar  by  military  bearing  and 
super-military  voice.  "  'Minds  me — say ! — 'minds  me, 
fellows — we're  going  to  burn  the  house  down!  Want 
to  warn  you — say,  be  quiet  a  minute,  this  is  serious! — 
want  to  warn  you  not  to  go  to  sleep  'round  the  place — ; 
ev'ybody  out — when  we  give  the  word — " 


204  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Woo-oo — ruff!"  bellowed  Amy,  with  the  sudden 
terrific  vigor  and  determination  of  an  enraged  bull. 
He  had  seized  the  opportunity  to  square  himself  off, 
chair  and  stove  swinging  before  him,  in  front  of  his 
miraculously  preserved  window.  There  was  triumph  in 
his  bellow.  Without  wasting  time  in  more  than  one 
preliminary  swing,  he  brought  chair  and  stove  up  over 
his  head  in  a  sweeping  three-quarters  circle,  released  them 
at  the  level  of  the  window-top,  so  that  they  shot  down 
ward  and  forward,  crashed  through  the  window  as  a  big 
stone  from  a  blast  crashes  through  a  hotbed  frame, 
bearing  away  panes  and  wooden  cross-pieces,  leaving  a 
magnificent  large  hole. 

Pandemonium  worse  pandemoniumized  broke  loose. 
Ollie  promptly  poured  a  panful  of  punch  on  Amy's  head, 
and  Amy  accepted  it  gratefully,  proudly,  a_s  a  proper 
chrism  of  victory.  Some  of  them  remembered  about  the 
fire,  and  mixed  bellows,  questions,  cuss-words  about  that 
with  the  counter  currents  started  by  Amy's  heroic 
achievement.  They  beat  on  tin  pans,  pounded  on  the 
bare  floor  with  their  heels,  impartially  drank  punch  and 
poured  it  over  each  other. 

"  This — this  is  getting  too  much  for  me !  "  announced 
the  hermit,  in  a  shriek,  to  the  Major,  providentially  col 
liding  with  him  near  the  fireplace.  The  Major  was  pok 
ing  at  the  mass  of  blazing  embers,  poking  at  them,  im 
mersed  in  thoughts  that  made  him  flinty-faced  and  gruff. 
"  We  ought  to  do  it,"  he  said,  "  before  they  get  much 
worse — while  they  still  got  enough  sense  to  get  out — 
when  that  hash  begins  to  make  'em  dopy — " 

"  Hey?  "  screamed  the  hermit,  seeing  that  the  Major's 
lips  were  moving. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  205 

"  I  say — those  hoodlums — look  at  'em — "  The  Major 
straightened  up,  and  waved  his  hand  at  the  melee,  raised 
his  voice  to  a  roar.  "  We  can't  get  'em  out  pretty  soon 
— they'll  begin  to  collapse — and  if  the  house  should  get 
afire—" 

His  voice  was  plainly  audible;  the  uproar  was  dying 
down.  It  continued  to  die  down  until  there  was  only 
the  methodical  beating  of  one  fist  on  one  tin  pan  to  break 
the  silence;  in  a  far  corner,  Angus  Andrew  MacDonald 
was  blissfully  beating  away  and  singing  to  himself : 

"  It's  up  with  the  bonnets  o'  bonnie  Dundee ! " 

"  Cut  out  that  noise ! "  called  a  sharp  voice  from  the 
new  center  of  interest,  silent  interest,  near  the  window 
that  Amy's  chair  had  gone  through. 

"  Huh  ?  "  queried  the  Major,  striding  forward. 

"  Come  fill  up  my  cup,  and  come  fill  up  my  pan — 
pam!  Pam!  "  chanted  Angus,  in  a  happy  dreamland  of 
his  own.  The  Major  pressed  forward,  and  blinked  at 
the  window.  A  woman's  face,  a  girl's  face,  Clotilde's 
face,  was  framed  by  the  jagged  opening :  the  face  showed 
unnaturally  white  and  clear-cut  against  the  darkness  out 
side.  There  was  an  unnatural  calmness  over  it,  an  ex 
altation,  a  gleaming  of  the  steady  dark  eyes. 

"  Come  saddle  my  horses,  and  call  out  my  men — Pam ! 
Pam!"  chanted  Angus'  voice,  behind,  sufficiently  loud, 
now  that  the  other  uproar  had  stopped,  to  fill  the  room 
with  sound. 

"  Shut  up!  "  snapped  and  crackled  the  Major's  voice; 
the  chanting  ended  at  that. 

"  I'm  sorry  to  interrupt  you,"  said  Clotilde;  "  but  the 


206  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

fact  is,  Helen  Hope  has  killed  herself.  We  could  hear 
you — and  I  thought  you  ought  to  know."  She  paused, 
seemed  about  to  say  more,  caught  a  glimpse  of  Carey 
Beemis'  face,  and  flashed  away. 

Somebody  dropped  a  sap  pan  a  little  while  afterward; 
shortly  after  that  all  of  those  who  still  had  pans  carried 
them  over  and  put  them  down  in  the  corner  of  the  room 
vacated  by  Angus,  nesting  them  carefully,  neatly  together. 
Ollie  James'  pan  was  so  dinted  and  bent  that  he  couldn't 
make  it  nest  with  the  others.  He  put  it  down  on  the 
floor  and  tried  to  get  it  into  shape  again  by  pressing  it 
down  with  his  heel,  working  carefully  so  as  not  to  make 
any  unnecessary  noise.  Several  others  stood,  with 
folded  arms,  and  watched  him. 

"  Well — it's  too  damned  bad — that's  about  all  a  man 
can  say,"  muttered  the  Major  at  the  end  of  five  speech 
less  minutes.  Then  they  all  began  to  talk  together,  in 
subdued  voices.  "  Too  bad."  "  It  seems  impossible." 
"  She  had  a  studio  over  there  across  the  brook,  didn't 
she  ?  "  The  hermit  mentioned  thoughtfully  to  the  Major : 
"  Speaking  of  a  death's  head  at  the  feast — "  He  looked 
around  at  the  bewildered  revellers.  "  Boys,  maybe  we 
shouldn't  discuss  it  now,"  he  said  gently;  "it's  no  fit 
subject  to  discuss  except  in  strict  sobriety,  and  we're  all 
drunk.  I  move  we  just  go  home  to  bed." 

Many  of  them  nodded.  "  That's  a  good  idea."  "  He's 
right."  "  Let's  go  home,"  they  said. 

Cy  Wetmore,  standing  with  his  hands  behind  him, 
back  to  the  fire,  protested  slowly :  "  We're  not  so  drunk, 
perhaps — at  least  we're  not  drunk  on  my  hasheesh.  If 
we're  drunk,  it's  largely  on  analogies — and  psychological 
suggestion.  We  can  get  over  that — if  we  haven't  already 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  207 

got  over  it."  He  smiled  tolerantly  at  their  mystification. 
"  That  famous  punch,"  he  said,  "  it  consists  of  two  dozen 
of  those  red  vegetable  coloring  tablets  that  come  with 
gelatine,  forty  gallons  of  pure  water,  and  a  little  castile 
soap  to  give  it  a  bead — and  flavor.  I  intended  to  tell 
you,  as  soon  as  you  all  got  drunk  enough." 

There  was  only  one  comment,  a  thoughtful,  penitential 
sniff,  that  might  have  pertained  just  as  well  to  a  more 
important  matter,  from  the  Major. 

Someone  asked,  after  a  few  more  "  Too  bads  "  and 
similar  comments  had  made  speaking  easier :  "  Who  was 
it — that  brought  the  news  ?  " 

"  Miss  Clotilde  Westbrook — she's  visiting  the  Klings," 
said  Sammy  Talbot. 

"  That's  probably  the  reason  Arthur  didn't  come — it 
must  have  happened  before  we — began,"  surmised  Ollie 
James. 

"She  looked  cold  as  ice,  didn't  she?"  It  was  Jack 
Stokes'  comment.  "  She  might  have  been  announcing 
anything  but  that.  Sort  of — victorious." 

Sammy  Talbot  put  in,  nervously :  "  She's  a  fine  girl. 
Her  mother  came  with  the  first  students.  She's  very 
modern — ah."  He  subsided  foolishly;  he  had  been 
thinking,  and  he  had  been  stirred  to  say  something  by 
that  mention  of  Clotilde's  cold,  victorious  look.  He  had 
thought  of  Carey  Beemis'  presence,  and  of  Edna's  voluble 
fears  for  Helen  Hope  if  Carey  turned  to  Clotilde,  and 
yielded  to  a  feeling  that  he  ought  to  say  something.  His 
eyes  furtively  sought  for  Carey  Beemis. 

Beemis  was  standing,  hands  in  his  pockets,  head  bowed, 
near  Cy  Wetmore,  over  at  one  end  of  the  fireplace.  He 
caught  Sammy's  eye.  As  if  the  look  had  been  a  demand, 


208  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

or  a  challenge,  he  lifted  his  head,  came  a  step  for 
ward. 

"  Well — if  I'm  not  drunk — and  I  certainly  don't  feel 
drunk,"  he  said,  "  I  hope  you  fellows  will  forgive  me 
if  I  make  a  little  statement  about — this — tragedy.  Some 
of  you  may  feel  that  I  ought  to  explain — anyway,  I  feel 
myself  that  I  ought  to;  and  I  will;  if  there  are  no 
objections?" 

He  seemed  neither  broken,  nor  hardened,  nor  even 
greatly  affected.  Like  an  amateur  actor  in  a  difficult 
scene,  there  was  an  automaton-like  forcelessness  about 
him.  A  partial  explanation  of  that  came  out  immedi 
ately  :  "  The  fact  is,  I've  been  expecting  this  might  happen 
for  some  time — I've  even  composed  a  statement  of  my 
side  of  the  case — and  it's  substantially  that  statement 
that  I — I  would  like  to  deliver — in  justification — in 
explanation — " 

He  stumbled  over  the  last  words,  came  gradually  to  a 
distressed  silence;  he  had  the  look  of  a  man  whose 
desultory  conversation  has  been  interrupted  by  an 
occurrence  suspiciously  resembling  sudden  death,  half  a 
mile  away.  "  The  failure  of  an  experiment  does  not 
vitiate  a  law."  He  said  it  with  an  air  of  utter  abstrac 
tion,  the  air  of  one  recently  under  chloroform,  and  paused 
again,  staring,  listening.  The  men  in  the  room  were 
silent,  motionless,  wooden-faced:  the  speech-maker's 
appearance  of  staring,  of  listening,  had  to  do  with 
nothing  there. 

He  seemed,  with  an  effort,  to  become  aware  of  them, 
aware  that  he  had  started  to  make  a  statement  to  them, 
even,  at  last,  aware  of  the  nature  of  the  statement.  He 
apologized : 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  209 

"  No — I  was  wrong.  It's  quite  different.  It  makes 
no  difference — none  whatever.  I  do  not  care  to  make 
a  statement,  after  all.  I  had  no  idea  as  to  how  it  would 
be.  Advance  ideas  are  frequently  inadequate.  So  I  hope 
you  will  excuse  me." 

Staring,  listening,  frowning  heavily,  he  went  out. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  WATCH  IN  THE  NIGHT 

THERE  was  a  music,  a  solemn  sound  as  of  men's  voices 
in  a  distant  Gregorian  chant,  breathing  from  the  upper 
branches  of  the  pines.  They  were  old  pines,  tall,  resonant 
with  years  and  wind-broken  branches,  chanting  their 
melancholy  harmonies,  a  night-song  just  this  side  of 
silence,  murmuring  together  beneath  the  stars,  in  the 
starry  darkness  at  the  village's  southward  fringe.  A 
century  had  passed  since  they  were  seedlings,  a  quarter 
of  a  century  had  passed  since  they  raised  a  Druid  chorus 
over  the  conception  of  Clotilde  Hooghtyling.  She  looked 
up  to  them,  listened  to  them,  in  passing,  and  loved  them 
with  the  thrilling  intimacy  that  was  her  birthright.  How 
tall  and  straight  and  dignified  and  unconquerable  they 
stood  up  in  the  night ! 

Tall  and  straight  and  calmly  dignified  as  if  she  had 
been  blood-kin  with  them,  she  paused  among  them,  near 
the  row  of  palely  gleaming  stepping  stones  that  crossed 
the  kill.  The  monotonous  burbling  of  the  little  river,  the 
swelling  and  falling  of  the  chant  of  the  pines:  and, 
everywhere  else,  silence,  wide,  velvety,  pall-like,  complete. 
A  veritable  sympathy,  a  benediction  of  understanding  and 
peace,  in  star-hung  darkness,  in  chanting  pines,  in  the 
faint,  tinkling  accompaniment  of  the  moving  water. 
"  Ora  pro  nobis!"  whispered  the  woman,  from  the 

2IO 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  211 

strangely  calm  fullness  of  her  heart.  "  Sancta — Sancta 
Natura — ora  pro  nobis — et  libera  nos !  " 

Kneeling  on  the  nearest  stepping  stone  she  bent  down 
for  a  sip  of  the  clear,  cool  brook  water,  to  wet  her 
finger-tips  and  feel  the  coolness  on  her  temples.  There 
was  a  spiritual  and  bodily  communion  in  partaking  of 
the  water,  as  if  there  had  been  in  the  deed  something  of 
an  ancient  religious  rite.  Made  at  once  more  humble  and 
more  proud,  she  crossed  the  brook,  followed  a  brookside 
path  for  a  few  hundred  feet,  and  returned  to  the  brook- 
side  studio.  Quietly,  but  without  stealthiness,  she  let  her 
self  into  the  living-room;  Arthur  and  Edna  and  Helen 
were  exactly  as  she  had  left  them,  all  wonderfully  calm, 
and  yet  all  with  a  worried  little  under-air  of  waiting. 
Helen  Hope's  marble-white  face,  resting  at  ease  on  a  sofa 
cushion  of  crimson  velvet,  with  her  closed  eyelids  puck 
ered  a  little  by  being  tightly  pressed  together,  as  when 
they  had  found  her,  especially  had  the  look  of  waiting. 
Her  bullet  had  missed  its  mark  by  the  tenth  part  of  an 
inch,  severing  the  aorta;  death  must  have  been  a  little 
delayed. 

Arthur  looked  up  vacantly,  and  said :  "  Well — your 
mission  seems  to  have  been  effective."  He  was  sitting 
beside  Edna,  in  front  of  a  lively  open  fire,  holding  her 
hand. 

"Oh,  yes — I  had  only  to  tell  them,"  said  Clotilde. 
She  drew  a  comfortable  brown  wicker  chair  up  to  the 
fire  and  sat  down  at  Edna's  other  side. 

"  I  should  have  insisted,  dear,  that  Arthur  go,"  said 
Edna,  looking  up  regretfully;  her  little  face  seemed  old, 
weazened,  lightless.  "  But  I  was  simply  all  shot  to 
pieces.  I  couldn't  bear  the  thought  of  his  leaving  me — 


212  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

it  was  because  he  saw  how  I  was  feeling  that  he  was  so 
lukewarm  in  offering  to  go." 

"  Oh,  I  enjoyed  the  little  walk;  the  air's  wonderful  to 
night.  And  I  think  I  understood  how  you  felt,  dear." 
Clotilde  glanced  over  at  Helen.  "  Perhaps  I  shouldn't 
have  urged  that  we  leave  her  face  uncovered;  but  it 
seemed  such  a  little  while  since  she'd  been — just  one  of 
us,  you  know — " 

Edna  assented  hastily,  with  a  little  shudder :  "  I  think 
it  was  right— it  was  thoughtful  and  beautiful  of  you, 
Clo',  to  think  of  it.  Only  my  miserable  rotten  nerves — 
really,  I  am  all  shot  to  Hell! " 

Arthur  put  in  mildly,  pressing  her  hand :  "  Really, 
dearie,  I  don't  think  you  ought  to — cuss-words,  you 
know." 

"Why  shouldn't  I,  if  it  relieves  my  nerves?  Helen 
always  enjoyed  my  cussing — even  though  she'd  never 
take  my  advice  to  take  it  up."  Edna's  drooping  spirits 
revived  a  little.  "  You  know,  Clo',  dear,  she  absolutely 
refused  to  swear,  smoke,  or  drink.  All  the  nerve-relax 
ing  vices — including  conventional  lying  and  conventional 
keeping  her  mouth  shut — she  refused  them  all.  Said  that 
modern  women  must  show  that  they  could  get  along 
without  those  vicious  helps  that  most  men  have  found 
so  necessary — not  to  mention  a  lot  of  unmodern  women 
— like  myself.  She  never  spared  herself — any  test — any 
danger — In  many  ways  she  was  hard  as  nails — hard  as 
those  Christian  Science  women  that  are  always  going  to 
pieces  with  nerves — If  she'd  only  compromised  a  little — 
if  she'd  only  not  tried  to  do  everything  at  once — Oh,  Clo', 
I  loved  her — I  know  she  was  a  fool,  but  I  loved  her, 
Clo' ! " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  213 

"  There  —  dearie  —  sweetie  pet  mustn't !  "  Arthur 
soothed  her. 

"  If  she'd  only  found  a  man — a  real  man,  who'd  have 
loved  and  appreciated  her !  "  said  Clotilde.  "  She  had 
to  make  the  fight — alone." 

"  That  was  the  whole  trouble,  I  think,"  said  Arthur, 
nervously  smoothing  his  retreating  chin.  "  It  needs  a 
more  perfect  breed  of  men — uh — than  we've  yet  de 
veloped — it  seems  to  me — to  live  up  to  the  ideals  of — 
you  ultra-modern  women." 

The  remark  was  directed  at  Clotilde.  "  There  are  not 
many  like  you,  Arthur,"  she  told  him,  with  sufficiently 
whole-hearted  admiration  to  confuse  him  a  little.  "  Oh, 
really,  I'm  under  no  illusions  as  to  the  variety  of — of 
hairpin  that  I  am,"  he  objected;  "besides,  I  doubt 
whether  I'm  modern — I  suppose  I  mean  ultra-modern." 

He  looked  at  the  fire,  his  fragile  dude's  phiz  sug 
gesting  that  he  was  vacantly  revolving  problems  of  the 
Dundreary  order,  things  that  no  fellow  could  find  out. 
If  Helen  Hope's  clear-cut,  square-featured  face  showed 
lineaments  worthy  of  a  Hypatia,  Arthur  Kling  needed 
only  a  cap  and  motley  to  make  him  a  typical  fool :  in  all 
outward  semblances  at  least.  "  You  know,  I  confess  to 
a — I  suppose  it  might  be  called  a  weakness — in  favor  of 
conventional  marriages,"  he  hazarded. 

Clotilde  demanded :  "  Why?  " 

"  Well,  as  I've — tried  to  ratiocinate  about  it,"  hesitated 
Arthur,  his  mild  blue  vacuous  round  eyes  roaming  toward 
the  ceiling,  "  it  seems  to  me  that,  just  at  present,  being 
a  member  of  a  free  union  was  about  all  one  person  could 
handle :  I  mean  it  was  about  a  job  in  itself,  under  present 
conditions;  and  I  both  didn't  fancy  that  I  was  fitted  for 


214  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  job — of  being  a  professional  radical,  you  know — and, 
also,  I  wanted  to  give  my  time  to  something  else — I  mean, 
my  painting,  you  know.  I  really  didn't  think  I  could  do 
both — I'd  seen  persons,  both  men  and  women,  with  a 
good  deal  more  of — of  guts  in  them  than  I  have — try 
to  do  both — and  make  a  miserable  failure  at  one  or  the 
other. 

"  I  know  I  express  myself  poorly,"  apologized  Arthur, 
"  but  the  gist  of  the  matter  was,  I  turned  renegade  to 
radicalism  in  order  to  do  something  I  was  more  interested 
in.  I  put  all  my  eggs  in  one  basket.  If  I  fail,  I  suppose 
I'll  be  all  the  sorrier  I  didn't  keep  up  my  radicalism — 
I'll  have  nothing  to  fall  back  on,  you  know.  Considering 
all  these  features  of  the  case,  you'll  see  why  I  can't  claim 
to  be  a  modern  man,  Clotilde — why  Edna  and  X  got 
respectably  married,  even  though  it  cost  us  more  money 
than  we  could  spare  to  get  Edna's  divorce.  I  couldn't 
see  any  other  way  out." 

"  I  fancy,"  said  Clotilde,  slightly  nettled,  "  that  Edna 
had  something  to  say  about  the  terms  of  your  mar 
riage." 

"  Oh,  of  course — "  Arthur  was  beginning,  with  pained 
surprise,  but  his  wife  interrupted. 

"  I  did  not,  my  dear — not  a  word ! "  retorted  Edna, 
with  some  crispness.  "  I  find,  furthermore,  that  I  have 
nothing  to  say  about  most  matters  that  intimately  con 
cern  our  joint  fortunes. — Just  look  at  him !  "  she  con 
tinued,  turning  to  survey  her  flustered  husband  as  if  he 
had  suddenly  become  a  curiosity,  entirely  unrelated  to 
her.  "  He  looks  like  a  feather-brain — like  putty — like 
dough,  doesn't  he  ?  A  zephyr  would  blow  his  poor  idiotic 
wits  in  any  direction,  wouldn't  it?  Yes,  it  would  not! 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  215 

Underneath  that  guileless  appearance  of  near-lunacy, 
Clotilde,  he's  flint,  he's  granite,  he's  reinforced  concrete ! 
Just  at  present,  he's  making  up  his  mind  to  go  to  the 
war — to  enter  the  regular  army,  and  he'll  probably  do  it, 
in  spite  of  all  I  can  do  or  say ! " 

"  Now,  dearie — "  Arthur  was  flustered  to  the  point 
of  horrified  indignation. 

"  Look  at  him — he's  a  wonder !  "  continued  his  wife, 
with  curiously  detached  interest.  "  At  this  very  identical 
moment  he's  resolving  to  do  his  best  to  become  a  casualty 
— I've  watched  him  as  he  warmed  to  the  idea,  through 
the  past  six  months,  and  this  evening  has  put  the  finishing 
touches  on  his  determination." 

"  Edna — please  talk  sense !  "  protested  her  husband. 
'*  You  know,  I  merely  said  that  I'd  never  had  any  idea 
that  war  was  so  horrible — until  we  found  Helen — as  we 
found  her,  you  know — " 

"  Isn't  that  a  zvonderful  deciding  argument,  Clotilde  ?  " 
Edna  was  as  much  edified  as  if  she  had  produced  a  rare 
variety  of  evening  gown.  "  War  is  really — well,  quite 
horrible,  you  know — blood,  bullet-wounds,  dead  women 
as  well  as  dead  men — oceans  of  nice  fresh  corpses,  and 
others  not  so  fresh — " 

"  Edna !  You're  getting  hysterical,  precious !  Please 
listen  to  hubby — " 

"  And  no  one  to  sit  around,  as  we  are  sitting,  to  keep 
the  rats  and  other  vermin  away! — No,  Artie,  I  will  not 
keep  still — at  least  freedom  of  speech  remains  to  me! 
Nor  am  I  one  whit  hysterical — I'm  dealing  in  plain 
matters  of  common  knowledge  and  common  sense !  " 

"  All  this,"  explained  Artie,  miserably,  disgustedly, 
"  because  I  ventured  the  simple  remark  that  this — this 


216  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

accident — seemed  to  bring  the  war  to  Woodbridge,  to 
suggest  the  greater,  the  infinitely  greater  horrors — " 

"  He's  only  been  waiting  to  become  convinced  that  the 
horror  was  great  enough,"  explained  Edna  to  Clotilde, 
ignoring  Artie  completely :  "  his  gentle  nature  couldn't 
believe  that  things  anywhere  could  be  so  bad — they  must 
have  been  exaggerated.  I've  watched  him  with  the 
greatest  interest.  The  newspapers  started  him — I  tried 
to  keep  them  from  him,  but  he'd  become  accustomed  to 
read  them  right  after  breakfast,  both  the  Times  and  the 
Tribune;  otherwise,  he  couldn't  work.  Well,  when  things 
weren't  going  well  with  the  Allies,  he  couldn't  work,  any 
way;  he'd  mope  around — God,  it's  an  awful  thing  to  see 
Artie  mope !  He  enters  into  it  so  whole-souledly,  it  takes 
every  ounce  of  pep  out  of  him;  his  voice  is  a  groan,  he 
rolls  his  poor  foolish  eyes  like  a  dying  calf,  he  won't  eat, 
he  tries  to  hold  a  brush,  gives  it  up,  and  goes  and  lies 
down  on  his  couch  and  moans  feebly  at  the  ceiling.  Oh, 
he's  enjoyed  the  war,  Artie  has !  Thanks  to  the  beastly 
war,  we're  facing  starvation,  and  Artie's  facing  the  wreck 
of  his  career — he  can't  even  draw  a  presentable  Grape 
Nuts  picture  any  more !  " 

Artie  groaned :  "  My  dear,  my  dear — I  try — I'll  even 
give  up  reading  the  papers — " 

"  You  see — he  tries."  Edna  nodded  vigorously.  "  He 
works  like  a  mountain  in  labor.  I've  stood  outside  the 
door  of  his  studio  by  the  hour,  and  listened  to  him  while 
he  tried  to  work — such  rumbling,  grunting,  groaning, 
toothy  hissings  of  despair,  mutterings  about  Boches  and 
Huns — like  a  mountain  trying  to  suppress  an  avalanche ! 
But  it's  worse  when  he  carries  his  troubles  into  his  sleep, 
when  he  makes  night  hideous — " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  217 

Artie  was  shocked  into  startled  denial :  "  Edna!  I 
don't  do  that !  " 

"  Oh,  don't  you  just!  And  his  poor  selfish  wife  crying 
into  her  pillow  beside  him — no  wonder  her  nerves  have 
all  gone  to  pot — no  wonder  she  has  hysterics — " 

Artie,  tears  flowing  steadily  from  his  two  round  eyes 
down  his  cheeks,  dripping  from  the  ends  of  his  ridiculous 
little  mustache,  knelt  at  her  knees,  took  her  hands  in  both 
of  his.  "  If  you'd  only — if  hubby's  little  pet  had  only 
t-told  him !  "  he  blubbered. 

"  A — fine  lot  of  good  that  would  have  done !  "  snapped 
Edna,  throwing  her  arms  around  his  neck,  drawing  his 
head  to  her  breast,  fiercely  tender.  "  And  through  it  all, 
Clo',  if  you'll  believe  me — "  She  looked  at  Clotilde, 
blinking  fiery  indignation  through  her  tears :  "  he's  never 
once  mentioned  his  heart's  desire,  his  burning  yearning 
to  get  a  gun,  go  over  there,  and  commit  general  German 
murder !  But  he  shall  go — yes,  he  shall  go-oh !  "  She 
broke  completely  for  a  moment,  her  head  dropped  over 
Artie's,  sobs  came  from  between  her  clenched  teeth. 
"Uh-uck!"  choked  her  husband;  she  was  holding  his 
head  so  tightly  against  her  bosom  that  the  resultant  back 
ward  curve  in  his  neck  threatened  to  strangle  him.  "  Yes, 
he  shall  go — and  kill  two  dozen  Huns — and  bring  their 
hides  home  to  hang  on  the  studio  wall — if  they  don't  get 
his  poor  gentle  hide  first!  Oh,  may  God  damn  the 
German  brutes  that  started  this  war! " 

Artie,  released  after  one  spasmodic  hug  that  nearly 
finished  the  dislocation  of  his  neck,  gasped  and  guggled, 
tried  to  protest :  "  Ug — sweetie — " 

"  Don't  be  foolish,  Arthur,"  Edna  reproved  him. 
"  See,  Polly's  herself  again :  and  I'm  sure  we're  ever- 


218  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

lastingly  disgracing  ourselves  in  the  eyes  of  Clotilde — 
who's  a  good  Pacifist,  and  wouldn't  appreciate  German 
pig-sticking  as  we  would." 

"  Oh — glug!  Edna,  dearest — "  Artie  was  beginning 
again. 

"  Sit  back  up  there  in  your  chair,  and  behave  your 
self  !  "  his  wife  chided  him,  shaking  a  forefinger  under 
his  nose  as  if  he  had  been  a  pet  poodle.  "  It's  all 
settled.  Tomorrow  you  go  down  to  Kingston — or  wher 
ever  it  is  fool  artists  enlist — and  get  going.  Maybe  you 
can  keep  up  your  painting  in  the  camps — you  certainly 
can't  at  home. 

"  Well— I'm  glad  to  get  that  off  my  chest,"  said  Edna. 
"  I  don't  suppose  I  could  ever  have  done  it,  if  it 
hadn't  been  for  Helen.  There's  something  singularly 
clarifying  to  one's  sense  of  proportion  about  a  corpse. 
I  hope,  if  Artie  is  slated  to  become  one,  he  looks  as  well 
as  Helen  does — and  has  somebody  to  keep  off  the  rats. 
It  seems  to  me  that  every  beastly  paper  I  pick  up  has 
something  in  it  about  those  corpse-devouring  rodents. 
Why  can't  they  poison  them  off,  or  something? 

"I  think,"  said  Edna  brightly,  "I'll  try  to  start  a 
movement  for  that — try  to  get  to  France  as  an  official 
rat-poisoner.  I  couldn't  pass  the  physical  examination 
for  a  Red  Cross  nurse — Oh,  yes,  Artie,  I  tried  that — 
two  weeks  ago,  when  I  made  that  flying  trip  to  New  York 
to  see  about  my  eyes — you  see,  I've  known  for  some  time 
that  you  were  bound  to  go — and  I'd  have  spoken  sooner 
if  it  hadn't  been  so  beastly  hard  to  face  the  prospect  of 
sticking  in  Woodbridge  alone — Woodbridge  in  winter  is 
bad  enough,  anyway.  I  must  read  up,  at  once,  on  rats 
and  rat-exterminating — get  letters  to  prove  I'm  an  expert 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  219 

— by  God,  Artie,  I  may  get  to  France  before  you  do !  I 
really  think  I've  hit  on  something  good."  She  smiled 
cheerfully  at  him.  "  For  the  love  of  Mike,  man,  give  me 
a  cigarette!"  she  ordered;  and  Artie  solemnly  gave  her 
one  from  his  case. 

Clotilde,  throughout  this  domestic  readjustment,  had 
stared  silently,  intently,  at  the  fire.  She  ventured,  now 
that  matters  seemed  to  have  reached  a  new  equilibrium, 
to  add  a  few  sticks  of  wood  to  the  fire,  taking  them,  with 
a  thought  for  the  still  hand  that  had  probably  put  them 
there,  from  the  bizarrely  painted  orange  and  green  wood- 
box,  at  one  corner  of  the  wide  stone  hearth.  Edna  said : 
"  We  were  forgetting  the  fire,  weren't  we?  "  She  seemed 
restless.  "  Clo',  dear,  the  Kingston  place  you  called  up 
—they  promised  that  the — the  conveyance  would  be  here 
before  nine  o'clock,  didn't  they?  " 

'  They  did — and  it  appears  they  were  mistaken," 
said  Clotilde,  looking  at  her  wrist-watch.  "  But,  dear, 
frankly — "  Anyone  could  have  sensed  Edna's  new  rest 
lessness.  "  I  can  just  as  well  stay  here,  alone,  until 
it  comes;  in  fact,  I'd  rather  like  to  stay  here  alone — I 
really  would,  Edna." 

Edna  apologized :  "  But  I  wasn't  thinking  of  that :  I 
was  just  thinking  that  Arthur  might  stay  here  with  you, 
while  I  ran  along.  I'm  getting  keener  and  keener  on  the 
subject  of — rats!  I  always  hated  rats — I  never  imagined 
that  they  might  do  me  a  great  favor !  I  was  just  think 
ing  there  might  be  a  good  deal  about  rats — in  our  old 
Encyclopaedia — I  don't  suppose  that  Helen  and  Carey 
had  an  encyclopaedia — "  Edna  arose  and  went  over  for 
a  survey  of  the  little  bookcase  that  stood  at  the  head  of 
the  couch  where  Helen  lay.  "  No,  there's  nothing  there," 


220  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

announced  Edna;  "  and,  if  you'd  really  not  mind  if  I  left 
you  alone  with  Artie,  Clotilde — " 

"  I  shouldn't  mind  a  bit — you  both  might  just  as  well 
go — the  carriage  for  Helen  will  undoubtedly  come  before 
long — I'd  really  like  to  spend  a  little  time  alone  here  with 
her,"  insisted  Clotilde  warmly,  rising. 

Artie  rose  and  brought  Edna's  coat  from  its  peg  in  the 
hallway.  "  I'm  all  agog  about  rats ! "  Edna  declared, 
getting  into  the  coat.  "  They're  the  most  perfectly 
fascinating  things — rats  are!  Especially  the  European 
Trench  Rat,  or  Rodens  Corpsicus !  "  She  began  backing 
toward  the  door,  taking  no  notice  of  Clotilde's  grave 
face,  taking  no  notice  of  Helen  whatever.  "  By-by,  then, 
dearie — Artie's  to  bring  you  up,  of  course,  for  the 
night !  "  she  said,  waving  her  hand,  and  hurried  away. 
Clotilde  had  never  seen  her  so  light-hearted,  so  completely 
reconciled  with  life.  In  some  way,  Edna's  light-hearted- 
ness  seemed  an  affront  to  their  silent  hostess. 

"  I  hope  she  does — put  that  over !  "  murmured  Artie, 
vacuously  picking  at  his  little  mustache.  "  I  think — I 
think  she  really  might,  you  know!  And  think  what  a 
blessing  it  would  be  to — to  the  fellows  over  there !  " 

Artie's  gentle  preoccupation  jarred  on  Clotilde;  both 
he  and  Edna  had  become  so  shallowly  oblivious  of  that 
greater  battlefield,  one  of  whose  most  pitiful  casualties 
was  before  them !  Clotilde  said :  "  Artie,  I  honestly  wish 
you'd  run  along,  too.  You  certainly  have  a  lot  of  things 
to  do  tonight,  if  you're  going  to  enlist  tomorrow?  " 

"  Why — yes — but — "  hesitated  Artie,  torn  between 
desire  and  politeness. 

"  Then  I  have  no  hesitation  in  telling  you,  in  all  sin 
cerity  and  friendliness,  that  I'd  like  to  have  this  last  little 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  221 

time — before  the  hearse  or  whatever  they  send  gets  here, 
— alone  with  Helen.  You  see,  Artie — we  were,  in  a 
measure,  comrade  soldiers — in  the  same  fight." 

"  Uh — why — ah !  "  gulped  Artie,  considerably  flabber 
gasted.  "  I — yes — I  hadn't  thought  of  that.  Of  course, 
if  you  really  wish — " 

"I  do— really— Artie!" 

"  Well — then — "  Still  not  more  than  half-convinced, 
he  strolled  out  into  the  hall  for  his  hat  and  overcoat. 

"  I  suppose — really — "  he  hesitated,  returning  wide- 
eyed,  penitently  thoughtful  to  the  doorway  of  the  living- 
room  :  "  I  suppose  I  ought  to  apologize — both  for  Edna 
and  myself — our  getting  side-tracked — as  it  were — over 
this  war  business.  But  I  don't  suppose,  Clotilde,  you  can 
appreciate  how  much  it  means  to  both  of  us — this  chance 
to  do  our  bit — however  small — " 

"  Oh,  I  do  understand !  "  insisted  Clotilde,  standing 
near  Helen,  glancing  at  Helen :  Artie,  at  least,  should  not 
affront  their  hostess  by  leaving  without  a  farewell  to  her, 
a  farewell  that  promised  to  be  for  ever;  but  Artie's 
vacuous  eyes  were  already  filling  up  with  ideas,  with  ideas 
of  his  hard  night's  work  elsewhere. 

"Well,  then — see  you  later!"  he  murmured,  absent- 
mindedly,  and  hurried  away,  banging  the  outer  door  after 
him. 

Clotilde  turned  to  look  down  at  Helen.  "  You  helped 
them  both  to  realize  a  cherished  desire,  dear,"  said  Clo 
tilde  gently,  "  and  neither  of  them  remembered  to  bid 
you  good-by.  However,  I  don't  suppose  that  that  would 
have  worried  you  if  you'd  been  alive,  and  I  suppose  it 
shouldn't  worry  me,  either." 

She  put  another  log  on  the  fire,  handling  it  thought- 


222  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

fully  because  it  had  been  handled  previously  by  a  martyr's 
hands,  sat  down  again  in  the  comfortable  wicker  chair, 
chintz-cushioned,  roomy,  Helen's  favorite  chair,  sitting 
sidewise  before  the  fire  so  that  she  faced  the  sofa  where 
Helen  reclined.  "  I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you  now,  dear," 
she  said,  "  that  I  shan't  let  them  have  you,  when  they 
come  to  take  you  away  in  that  hearse,  to  store  you  for 
the  night  in  some  wretched  undertaking  parlor.  To 
morrow  morning  will  be  quite  soon  enough.  Tonight 
we  belong  to  each  other — we'll  just  sit  and  think,  sort 
of  take  stock  in  the  long,  deadly  war  in  which  you  lost 
your  life. 

"  And  the  first  idea  that  occurs  to  me,  dear,"  continued 
Clotilde,  framing  the  words  with  her  lips  but  no  longer, 
as  became  their  greater  intimacy,  feeling  it  necessary  to 
speak  aloud,  "  is  that  your  death,  the  stir  it  will  make, 
the  bits  of  truth  that  will  come  out  as  it  is  talked  over 
• — it  will  all  help,  dear !  Your  death  shows  our  Modern 
ism  isn't  all  a  silly  joke — you,  and  other  soldiers  of 
Freedom,  women  soldiers  putting  idealism  before  your 
own  safety,  and  dying,  or  wrecking  your  lives,  to  spread 
the  truth — your  death,  and  the  deaths  of  others  like  you, 
will  give  pause  to  silly  newspaper  editors,  and  play 
wrights,  and  novelists,  who  make  cheap  humor  out  of 
fine  things  that  they  are  too  gross  to  understand.  By 
dying,  dear,  you  show  that  these  ideals  have  a  root  in 
life — are  competent  for  good  or  ill  in  the  world.  They 
will  not  laugh  and  cheaply  philosophize  quite  so  much  at 
the  shows  we  make  of  ourselves  when  we  try  to  do  away 
with  conventional  falsities,  when  we  try  to  face,  and  make 
others  face,  the  plain,  simple  truth — that  makes  men  free ! 
Oh,  my  dear,  I've  been  fighting  for  the  truth  myself,  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  223 

little,  up  here  in  Woodbridge — not  for  such  a  funda 
mental  truth,  perhaps,  as  the  one  for  which  you  chose  to 
make  your  battle — only  for  a  little  more  honesty  and 
openness  in  facing  the  facts  of  parenthood — and  I  sup 
pose  any  outsider,  almost  any  conventional  outsider, 
would  see  only  a  silly  girl's  highly  humorous  display  of 
her  ignorance  of  life  in  the  troubles  I've  stirred  up. 
What  do  people  care  about  honor,  responsibility,  truth, 
once  they  are  shorn  of  the  worn-out,  dirty,  familiar  rags 
custom  prescribes  as  their  necessary  wear? 

"Dear  girl,"  thought  Clotilde,  "when  the  forts  of 
folly  fall,  yours  will  be  one  of  the  bodies  they  find  against 
the  wall!" 

She  looked  at  Helen  a  while  in  silence,  stirred,  quick 
ened  in  brain  and  pulse,  inspired  to  idealistic  pictures  and 
high  visions  by  Helen  dead  as  she  could  never  have  been 
inspired  by  Helen  alive,  no  matter  how  successful  Helen's 
sex-experiments  had  been.  Death  and  failure,  twin 
glories  of  the  sensitive,  youthful  imagination,  were  wine 
in  her  veins.  Death  and  failure  in  the  nebulous  cause  to 
which,  nebulously,  she  had  pledged  herself,  were  crystals 
in  which  appeared  magical  symbols  and  meanings  of  life. 
With  their  aid,  she  discovered  the  falsities  behind  some 
of  the  phantasmagoria,  miscalled  solid  facts,  fondly  relied 
on  by  many  far  older  and  wiser  than  she. 

How  ignorant  she  was,  how  visionary,  fantastic,  how 
daringly  ready  to  doubt  the  roundness  of  the  earth — as 
her  daring  and  visionary  prototypes  had  been  ready,  once, 
to  doubt  the  flatness  of  it,  or  the  established  fact  that  it 
was  supported  on  the  backs  of  four  tortoises!  She  had 
much  of  the  equipment  of  a  successful  explorer;  not,  it 
is  true,  of  the  scientific  explorer  whose  discoveries  are 


224  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

mainly  of  benefit  to  science,  but  of  the  great  practical  and 
humanly  beneficent  type.  So  Columbus,  loaded  with 
ignorance,  lies,  magnificently  mistaken  about  nearly 
everything,  set  sail  for  the  fabulous  splendor  of  Cathay, 
and  stumbled  on  America,  braving  the  solid  danger  of 
his  time  that  his  ships  might  tumble  over  the  edge  of  the 
earth.  To  such  crazy  adventuring  the  world  owed  that 
edifying  new  mass  of  fact  and  fable  comprised  under  the 
general  head  of  "  Feminism,"  and  Clotilde,  at  that  hour, 
was  ripe  for  the  position  of  pilot  on  some  such  crazy 
caraval  as  the  leaky  old  Nina,  Pinta,  or  Santa  Maria;  she 
was  a  born  and  made  discoverer,  and  established  facts 
mattered  not  at  all  when  they  opposed  her  abnormally 
active  imagination. 

Granting  only  the  possibility  of  continents  still  undis 
covered  in  the  worlds  of  love,  parenthood,  human  rela 
tionships,  and  she  was  a  significant  figure.  There  was 
every  chance  that  she,  and  thousands  of  her  sisters  and 
brothers,  in  their  wild  careening  about,  in  their  trusting 
to  compasses  that  sometimes  refused  to  point  north,  in 
their  search  for  a  new  Cathay- ful  of  gold  and  jewels  and 
rich  spices,  in  their  burning  up  of  old  maps,  throwing 
overboard  of  conventional  harbor  pilots,  taking  to  the 
open,  unexplored  main  in  boats  that  only  their  enthusiasm 
kept  water-tight  for  fifteen  minutes,  crying  "  Land ! 
Land !  "  at  every  sight  of  seaweed,  going  crazy  with 
joy  over  the  discovery  of  a  bit  of  carvad  stick  or  some 
other  rude  insignia  that  suggested  they  were  on  the  trail 
of  savages — how  they  hungered  and  thirsted  after  sav 
ages,  quoted  and  pointed  morals  with  them — with  all  the 
na'ive  enthusiasm  of  true-blooded  adventurers ! —  There 
was,  spite  of  wrecks  and  deaths  and  general  heroic 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  225 

misery,  every  chance  that  some  of  them  would  stumble 
on  something,  perhaps  something  of  some  importance, 
in  regions  admittedly  not  so  perfectly  explored  and 
mapped  as  is  this  physical  round  bit  of  matter  of  inex 
plicable  solidity,  considering  all  we  can  surmise  about 
its  composition,  on  which  we  inexplicably  cannon-ball 
through  inexplicable  space.  Not  until  the  last  mystery 
is  brought  to  book  can  we  afford  altogether  to  despise 
our  adventurous  lunatics,  derange  our  cabined,  well- 
regulated,  mystery- forgetting  little  lives,  outrage  our 
comfortable  little  dogmas  and  moral  maps,  throw  our 
black-coated  harbor  pilots  overboard,  as  they  will. 

Clotilde  was  inspirited,  fired  with  new  enthusiasm  for 
the  adventure,  as  any  proper  soldier-adventurer  should 
be,  by  the  death  of  her  comrade.  There  was  no  thought 
of  turning  back  in  her;  this  bitter  defeat  and  painful, 
untimely  death  cried  "  Forward ! "  There  was  far 
greater  chance  that  she  would  go,  brazenly  and  unpre 
pared,  against  the  very  danger  that  had  killed  Helen 
than  that  she  would  bethink  herself  of  her  own  safety. 
Given  a  chance  for  a  free-love  affair  at  the  moment,  given 
a  man  offering  half  an  opportunity,  and  she  might  have 
chalked  up  another  failure,  or  suicide,  or  discovery — or, 
more  probably  in  a  prosaic  world,  a  kind  of  sordid  half- 
success — along  free-love  lines.  Fortunately,  or  unfor 
tunately,  Clotilde  could  think  of  no  man  worthy  to  accom 
pany  her  on  the  quest.  Her  ideals  were  high,  her  dreams 
limitless;  it  needed  a  good  figure  of  a  gentleman  to 
measure  up  to  her  specifications  for  First  Mate. 

It  was  a  quest  on  which  a  First  Mate  was  essential, 
equally  essential  was  it  that  he  should  be  a  man.  Clotilde 
turned  her  chair  so  that  she  faced  the  fire,  forgot  Helen 


226  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

except  as  a  very  present  inspiration,  and  began  to  think 
of  men,  or,  more  specifically,  of  a  man  worthy  to  be  her 
First  Mate.  Even  a  poor  variety  of  man  would  do,  at 
a  pinch,  for  the  need  was  great.  She  was  rather  tired  of 
her  adventure  in  the  direction  of  discovering  a  father, 
proclaiming  him  before  all  the  world;  it  had  settled  down 
to  a  place  where  cheap  compromise  seemed  inevitable,  and 
it  hadn't  been  the  supreme  Feminist  adventure,  anyway. 

Clotilde  thought  of  Skeeter,  beginning  with  her 
most  recent  acquaintances  among  matable  men.  He  had 
stirred  her  a  little — he  and  the  sport  of  chance,  working 
mysteriously  through  a  blackberry  briar  and  an  afternoon 
on  a  hillside.  It  was  necessary,  of  course,  that  the  man 
stir  her — at  least  a  little.  But,  on  the  whole,  even  her 
enthusiasm  couldn't  find  suitable  material  in  Skeeter. 

She  thought,  going  back  a  step,  of  Carey  Beemis;  there 
would  be  something  heroic,  defiant  if  she  chose  Beemis— 
if  she  made  a  success  of  an  adventure  with  him  where 
another  Captain  had  failed.  Beemis,  also,  had  stirred 
her  a  little,  in  spite  of  herself,  almost  as  much  as 
Skeeter  had,  she  recognized,  now.  There  were  reasons 
for  choosing  Beemis,  excellent  Modernistic  reasons;  and 
there  were  none,  at  least  none  recognizable  by  a  good 
Modernist,  against  choosing  him.  Nevertheless,  she 
passed  on,  deciding  to  return  to  Beemis  later  if  no  better 
material  offered. 

There  was  Bobby  Partindale,  of  Greenwich  Village 
and  the  studio  quarter  near  Carnegie  Hall,  a  devout  and 
enthusiastic  applicant  for  her  favors  following  the  end  of 
her  affair  with  Clement  Townes.  Bobby  had  lovely, 
wavy  hair,  and  delightful  big  brown  eyes ;  he  sang  Italian 
songs  to  ukeleles  made  from  cigar-boxes  and  other  inter- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  227 

esting  junk;  he  sold  the  instruments  at  good  prices,  too, 
and  he  sold  MS.  copies  of  songs  that  he  composed  him 
self,  good  lively  songs,  with  the  right  riotous  and  rich 
G.  V.  flavor.  His  special  form  of  devotion  was  ears. 
"  You  have  wicked  ears !  "  he  was  accustomed  to  tell 
ladies;  he  had  told  Clotilde  that.  Then  it  was  his  custom 
to  explain  fully  just  in  what  folds  and  shell-like  convolu 
tions  and  lobal  pinknesses  lay  the  wickedness  of  the  ears 
he  happened  to  be  devoting  himself  to.  So  great  was  his 
skill  and  knowledge  that  many  ladies  felt  not  only  wicked 
as  to  their  ears,  but  wicked,  quite  audaciously  wicked, 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  their  members,  be 
fore  he  had  finished.  Clotilde,  on  occasion,  had  been 
made  to  feel  so  completely  wicked  by  him  that  goodness 
knows  what  had  prevented  her  from  doing  most  unwicked 
and  properly  conventional  Modernistic  deeds;  perhaps  it 
was  her  discovery  that  he  was  using  the  ear-method  on 
at  least  two  other  Modernistic  damsels  in  the  interims  of 
applying  it  to  her.  She  feared,  thinking  the  matter  over, 
that  Bobby  wouldn't  do  for  a  First  Mate.  It  wasn't 
so  much  that  he  lacked  steadiness  as  that  he  lacked  the 
material  out  of  which  steadiness  could  be  constructed  by 
a  proper  Captain.  Clotilde  sensed  the  makings  of  steadi 
ness  in  Carey  Beemis,  thanks  partly,  perhaps,  to  Helen's 
suicide;  the  look  on  his  face,  just  the  glimpse  of  it  she 
had  been  granted  as  she  delivered  her  message  to  that 
roaring  roomful  of  celebrants,  had  revealed  depths  and 
steadiness  she  hadn't  had  reason  for  expecting  to  find. 
Thanks  to  his  fatal  adventuring,  Carey  might  develop 
into  a  real  man;  and  yet — 

She  passed  back  beyond  Bobby  Partindale  to  Clement 
Townes — John  Clement  Townes,  or  J.  Clement  Town.es, 


228  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

as  he  had  variously  styled  himself.  Just  as  a  comrade, 
as  a  good,  not  too  important  friend,  Clement  had  been 
the  prize  flower  in  her  considerable  garden  of  beaux. 
He  had  literary  education,  delicacy,  a  good  commonness 
in  taste,  a  devotion  to  the  plain  truth  that  his  good  taste, 
except  when  he  was  drunk,  had  kept  from  becoming 
offensive.  If  he  was  exotic,  rather  hectic  in  his  enjoy 
ment  of  life,  that  had  been  the  result  of  his  boredom. 
He  was  nearly  always  bored.  He  had  excellent  excuses 
for  the  state  in  too  much  money,  too  many  sycophants, 
and  nothing  vivid  to  do.  He  was  at  once  too  small  and 
too  large  for  his  environment,  too  large  to  go  into  any 
of  the  business  that  offered,  too  small  to  cut  a  niche  for 
himself  out  of  the  unpromising  material  ready  to  his 
hand.  In  his  rare  fits  of  seriousness,  deadly  seriousness, 
Clotilde  had  pitied  him,  almost  loved  him  for  his  Byronic 
disgust  with  life. 

She  remembered  him  as  she  had  seen  him  last,  tall, 
long-nosed,  with  contemptuous  dark-blue  flashing  eyes, 
too  much  chin,  a  Cupid's  bow  of  a  mouth  under  his 
neat  little  black  mustache,  trim,  neat,  dandified,  athletic, 
rather  English  in  his  swagger  and  drawl,  drawling  out, 
tinder  the  exhilaration  of  too  much  "  red  ink,"  the  sonnet 
he  had  composed  to  her  eyebrows,  for  the  edification  of 
a  cafe-ful  of  hilariously  amused  Modernists.  He  had 
written  the  verses  on  the  back  of  a  wine-stained  menu 
card,  and  he  waved  the  card  delicately  before  him  as  he 
recited. 

The  rather  hectic  verses  had  been  a  particular  shock 
to  Clotilde  because  he  had  never  given  her  cause  to  con 
sider  him  more  than  a  simple  "  good  fellow,"  almost 
"one  of  the  girls."  He  wasn't  altogether  a  man;  sub- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  229 

consciously  she  expected  the  ancient  masculine  virtues,  or 
at  least  some  of  them,  in  any  man  who  made  love  to 
her,  who  even  showed  that  he  thought  of  her  as  a 
woman :  a  certain  dignity,  stability,  purposef ulness,  a 
certain  solidity  of  mental  as  well  as  of  physical  structure 
on  which,  at  times,  even  a  very  modern  woman  might 
lean.  Clement  had  none  of  this.  He  could  knock  a 
man  down,  he  was  an  excellent  boxer  and  prided  himself 
on  the  steely  sinews  of  his  arms  and  shoulders,  but  he 
showed  no  sign  of  being  able  to  support,  to  rest,  a  tired 
woman,  sylph-like  as  Clotide  though  that  woman  might 
be.  His  energy  was  all  dynamic,  katabolic,  the  energy 
called  typically  masculine  by  a  few  modern  biologists,  but 
still  at  variance  with  the  static,  metabolic  powers  that 
prehistoric,  ancient,  mediaeval  and  modern  women  have 
sought,  by  instinct,  quite  as  determinedly  as  the  more 
masculine  forces,  in  their  mates.  Clotilde,  and  others 
thought  of  him  as  a  little  sissified,  a  little  effeminate;  in 
reality  he  was  too  thoroughly  typical  young  male,  without 
those  feminine  virtues  that  have  graced  masculinity 
throughout  the  ages,  especially  masculinity  after  it  has 
recovered  from  the  first  shock  of  finding  itself  young, 
strong  to  conquer,  vigorously  male. 

"  If  Clement  were  only  more  of  a  man! "  sighed  Clo 
tilde,  weighing  possibilities.  If  he  had  been,  her  com 
pleted  supposition  ran,  she  might  have  lured  him  away 
from  his  beastly  European  brawl  to  a  nobler  contest. 
She  knew  her  own  powers,  the  allurements  common  to 
all  marriageable  young  women,  certainly  not  slight  as 
possessed  and  wielded  by  herself.  A  cablegram  to 
Clement,  in  the  midst  of  his  new  attack  on  Germans  and 
his  own  boredom:  something  short  but  significant:  per- 


230  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

haps  just,  "  Come.  Clotilde.";  would  he  not  come,  even 
if  he  had  to  desert  to  do  it?  She  ventured  to  think 
that  he  might. 

"  But  he  isn't  a  real  man''  she  decided,  and  turned  her 
thoughts  to  other  First  Mate  possibilities.  They  were  a 
pretty  poor  lot,  on  the  whole,  especially  poor  they  seemed 
after  her  considerable  gruelling  of  Clement-in-the-spirit. 
Clement,  in  spite  of  his  alleged  lack  of  manliness,  was 
really  the  most  alluring  possibility.  There  was  some 
thing  downright  likable  about  him,  and  interesting,  too, 
as  if  he  offered  more  depths  to  be  stirred  up  than  most 
of  the  men  she  had  known.  If  only  he  had  been  not 
quite  so  restless,  and  excitable,  and  bored,  and  melan 
choly,  and  hectic,  and  unstable — and  sissified ! 

Perhaps,  she  thought,  there  might  be  some  artist  still 
lingering  in  Woodbridge,  or  some  member  of  the  general 
literary  and  artistic  riffraff,  who'd  be  suitable  timber  for 
her  First  Mate,  and  glad  to  ship  as  one.  However,  that 
was  a  mere  speculation;  there  was  nothing  to  be  done 
about  it  for  the  present,  and  she  was  a  little  tired,  any 
way.  She  replenished  the  fire,  noted  that  it  was  ten 
o'clock,  wondered  when  the  conveyance  would  come  for 
Helen,  reassured  herself  that  Helen  should  not  go  before 
the  next  morning,  and  became  interested  in  Helen  once 
more  rather  than  in  the  plans  and  resolves  that  Helen's 
death  had  aroused  in  her.  Helen  lay  calmly,  taking  her 
rest,  lying  in  such  state  as  the  means  at  hand  and  the 
loving  sympathy  of  her  friends  afforded. 

It  was  Clotilde's  doing,  that  crimson  pillow  under 
Helen's  marble-white  face,  the  black  and  crimson  Indian 
blanket  drawn  cozily  up  to  Helen's  throat.  The  old- 
fashioned  dark-red  chrysanthemums  with  golden  centers, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  231 

standing  in  a  vase  of  dark  gleaming  bronze  on  the  little 
reading  table  near  Helen's  head,  had  been  gathered  by 
Helen,  but  placed  there  by  Clotilde.  She  had  even  found 
time  so  to  dress  herself  that  she  might  be  in  harmony 
with  the  occasion;  she  wore  an  old-fashioned,  high- 
waisted  gown  of  dark  gray  silk,  with  folded  plaits  cross 
ing  the  bosom,  leaving  a  little  Quaker-like  V-shaped  open 
ing  at  the  neck,  and  the  plain  dressing  of  her  hair,  drawn 
smoothly  down  over  her  wide  brows  from  a  part  in  the 
middle  and  caught  up  in  a  loose  Psyche-knot  behind,  was 
of  a  Quaker-like  simplicity.  Her  low  shoes  and  silk 
stockings  were  of  a  color  to  match  the  gown.  She  wore 
no  jewelry;  she  had  even  taken  off  the  platinum  circlet, 
set  with  a  moss  agate,  her  birthstone,  that  usually 
gleamed  on  the  third  finger  of  her  left  hand. 

"  Dear,"  said  Clotilde,  studying  the  quiet  face,  "  why 
do  you  look  a  little  worried,  a  little  anxious — for  some 
thing?  All  worry,  all  anxiety,  are  over,  now,  for  you 
— aren't  they?  Or  was  it  the  waiting — for  delaying 
death — that  still — '  Clotilde  arose  and  walked  over  to 
the  couch.  She  smoothed  the  tightly  pressed  eyelids  with 
her  fingers,  gently,  till  the  wrinkles  disappeared,  and  the 
waiting  look  was  gone.  "  There,  dear,"  she  said,  re 
turning  to  her  chair;  "  that's  better,  isn't  it?  I  think  you 
were  waiting  for  someone  to  do  that.  Now — requiescat 
in  pace.  Requiescat,  Helen,  dear,  dead  soldier — 
comrade — " 

She  put  more  wood  on  the  fire,  finding  some  bits  of 
dry  pine  at  the  bottom  of  the  box,  and  turned  to  look 
at  her  friend  by  the  better  light.  Helen's  white  face  was 
all  serenity,  now;  no  liniament  held  a  hint  of  anything 
further  desired,  feared,  expected. 


/232  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

A  curious  little  feeling  of  loneliness,  of  having  no 
further  part  in  her  friend's  interests,  saddened  the 
watcher,  moved  her  to  comment :  "  Now  all  sad  thoughts, 
and  all  glad  thoughts  are  over — for  you,  dear.  But  we 
— we  have  to  keep  on  living.  In  some  ways,  you  are  to 
be  envied,  dear — you  don't  have  to  think  of  tomorrow. 
What  you  shall  drink,  what  eat,  what  wear — yes,  even 
how  you  shall  serve  the  Truth,  for  even  that  thought  is 
sometimes  a  bore.  You  never  compromised  while  you 
were  alive — and  you  don't  have  to  think  of  compromises 
now.  The  rest  of  us,  probably,  will  have  to  compromise 
— the  more  as  we  grow  older.  Yes,  in  some  ways  it's 
better  to  die  young,  uncompromising,  uncheapened  by 
having  to  be  satisfied  with  poor  little  half-loaves  of  your 
ideals." 

Helen's  supreme  indifference, — Helen,  lying  so 
straightly  in  an  icy  calm,  grander  than  sovereignty 
— dispirited  her.  "  You  don't  really  need  me,  dear — 
you're  sublimely  beyond  needing  anyone  or  anything," 
Clotilde  told  her,  sadly;  and  looked  around  the  little 
living-room,  half -consciously  in  search  of  diversion. 
She  had  been  very  serious,  and  very  tense,  for  a  con 
siderable  time. 

There  were  books,  perhaps  fifty  of  them,  their  vari 
colored  backs  gleaming  in  the  firelight.  "  I  wonder  what 
meat  nourished  her  soul  ?  "  Clotilde  asked  herself,  allow 
ing  the  third  person  to  creep  in. 

She  recognized,  among  the  more  interesting  titles, 
Hecker's  "  Short  History  of  Women's  Rights,"  George's 
"  Woman  and  Tomorrow,"  and  Mary  Austin's  "  Love 
and  the  Soul-Maker."  There  were  at  least  a  dozen  other 
titles  suggestive  of  Feminism;  Clotilde  noted  them  with 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  233 

general  approbation,  but  her  eyes  roved  on.  "  Confi 
dence.  Henry  James,"  she  read,  and  shrugged  her 
shoulders,  suspecting  that  the  said  "  Confidence "  re 
volved  around  a  suspected  adultery.  "  Gray  Youth," 
by  Oliver  Onions;  she  had  read  that  dry,  drab  attack 
on  most  modern  tendencies,  so  ravingly  indignant  at  the 
author's  cheap,  shallow,  short-sighted  unfairness  as  to 
make  even  its  fictional  husks  devourable  to  the  last  one. 
Victor  Hugo's  "  Derniere  Gerbe  "  in  half-red  morocco; 
Oscar  Wilde's  "  Intentions,"  in  the  cheap  but  good  Eng 
lish  edition  of  Methuen;  a  volume  of  short  poems  by 
Browning;  Forel's  monumental  "  Sex,"  without  which 
no  deep-dyed  Feminist's  library  was  complete;  a  volume 
of  Bacon's  Essays;  a  French-English  dictionary;  a 
volume  of  English  quotations  that  she  thought  was  Bart- 
lett's,  but  discovered,  by  peering  close  in  the  uncertain 
firelight,  wasn't;  a  pamphlet  on  birth-control,  another  on 
the  work  of  The  New  York  Society  for  Improving 
the  Condition  of  the  Poor — none  of  them  interested 
her  very  much.  She  handled  a  few  of  them  with 
the  deftness  of  a  bookish  person,  only  to  slip  them 
back  again.  They  weren't  worth  lighting  the  lamp 
for. 

She  sat  down  before  the  fire  again,  turning  her  chair 
to  face  the  blaze,  a  little  bored,  truth  to  tell,  even  by  the 
presence  of  her  silent  hostess.  She  had  known  the  time 
when  such  books  would  have  thrilled  her  to  the  soul. 
Now  she  felt  just  a  little  lonesome,  deserted.  It  was  a 
very  old  feeling.  It  dated  back  to  the  very  beginning 
of  her  remembered  consciousness.  She  had  always  been 
lonely,  always  hoping  for  somebody  or  something  that 
would,  without  being  a  part  of  her,  in  some  way  fill  up 


234  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  need,  the  gap  somewhere,  that  made  her  feel  lone 
some. 

As  a  very  small  girl,  she  remembered,  she  had  thought 
that  her  father  might  fill  that  gap — her  supposed  but 
always  very  busy  father,  the  Reverend  Percy  Westbrook, 
A.M.,  D.D.  Her  mother,  she  knew  from  experience, 
could  never  quite  fill  it.  Somehow  the  size  and  shape 
and  general  dimensions  of  the  gap  in  her  soul  suggested 
a  man.  "  A  lover — an  adoring  cavalier !  "  had  been  the 
verdict  of  sixteen,  discarded  with  some  heat  at  twenty- 
one,  after  a  dozen  unsatisfying  flirtations.  "  A  life 
work ! "  decreed  twenty-one,  and  she  took  up  her  neg 
lected  painting.  "  Aided  and  assisted  by  an  enthusiasm," 
said  twenty-two,  and  she  became  a  heated  Feminist.  "  The 
thing  you've  always  been  missing  most  is  a  composite 
thing,"  decreed  a  wise  volume  by  a  Boston  physician,  that 
came  her  way  in  her  twenty-third  year.  "  You  need  what 
every  mortal  needs — Love,  Work,  Play,  and  Worship." 
"  Aimer,  Travailler,  Esperer,  Rever,"  advised  the  gentle 
Michelet,  at  about  the  same  time,  but  she  preferred  the 
Boston  physician's  formula  as  less  given  to  unmodern- 
istic  sentiment. 

Clotilde  was  voyaging  again,  taking  a  reckless  little 
voyage  by  herself,  in  search  of  the  Isles  of  Youthful 
Content.  It  mattered  not  that  her  route  lay  from  a 
common  harbor,  to  a  common  and  popular  port — if  her 
guiding  star  was  rightly  chosen.  The  universal  loneli 
ness  of  youth,  the  feeling  of  a  lack,  of  incompleteness, 
universal  as  any  experience  of  youth  may  be,  one  of  those 
inevitable  moving  forces  of  the  years  before  self-discov 
ery  has  proceeded  very  far — what  though  she  knew  that 
other  young  things  suffered  similarly?  The  glory  and 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  235 

the  tragedy  of  youth  being  that  feelings  are  hard  to  com 
municate  except  by  direct  experience,  her  trouble  was 
essentially  new  and  original  with  her.  She  had  sailed 
on  a  very  old  trade-route,  with  a  thousand  sails  on  either 
hand ;  and  the  destination  of  most  of  them,  whether  for 
good  or  for  ill,  would  be  that  everlastingly  new  and 
splendid  and  most  ancient  harbor  called  Marital  Love. 
The  fact  that  Love  came  first  on  the  maps  of  the  two 
geographers,  she  had  just  remembered,  did  not  remove 
the  glamor  from  her  search,  nor  would  it  remove  the 
enchanting  surprise  when  she  arrived.  She  voyaged  as 
one  on  unknown  seas,  setting  all  the  sails  of  her  unique 
and  universal  loneliness. 

She  was  lonely,  she  felt  a  need  of  someone,  something : 
perhaps,  she  thought,  if  Helen  had  lived,  they  might  have 
struck  up  a  friendship,  a  close,  satisfying,  gap-filling 
friendship,  and  the  mysterious  ache  would  have  vanished. 
Only  a  little  while  before,  she  had  been  sure  that  the 
finding  of  her  father,  a  real  friendship  with  a  real  and 
loving  father,  was  what  she  needed.  She  doubted,  now, 
whether  her  father  could  fill  that  need;  he  had  his  hands 
rather  full  of  Ethel,  for  one  thing,  and  he  had  regrettable 
teeth,  for  another.  Now  she  turned  to  Helen,  to  the 
Helen  that  might  have  been  if  Helen  hadn't  fallen  in 
battle;  and  again  doubts  assailed  her.  Carey  Beemis,  or 
if  not  he,  some  other  adorer,  either  of  herself  or  Helen, 
would  probably  have  interfered  with  any  perfect  sym 
pathy  and  comradeship.  Girls'  friendships,  however 
complete  and  satisfying,  were  always  being  invaded  by 
predatory  males.  Even  she — she  remembered  her  recent 
experiences  with  Skeeter  and  Carey  Beemis,  to  go 
no  further  back — even  she  had  recognized  that  she  might 


236  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

not  be  above  capture  by  some  predatory  male.  She  had 
almost  reached  the  ripeness  and  wisdom  of  considering 
such  a  capture  of  herself  as  not  without  compensations; 
if,  in  addition,  it  could  be  made  to  vindicate  a  leading 
tenet  of  Feminism — 

It  came  back,  on  a  firmer  basis  this  time,  to  her  need 
for  a  Mate — her  First  Mate,  in  an  adventure  not  only 
of  Modernism,  but  of  life. 

"  I — I  need  a  mate — every  woman  does !  "  she  told  her 
self,  thrilled  and  startled  by  this  discovery  of  a  matter 
about  which  she  had  been  fully  informed  by  authorities 
too  numerous  to  mention,  and  yet  which  seemed  new  and 
startling  because,  before  the  soul-stirring  of  that  night, 
she  had  never  really  felt  the  truth  of  it  deeper  than  the 
ideational-centers  of  her  cerebrum.  Now  it  flooded 
through  all  her  cortexes,  through  her  cerebellum,  her 
medulla  oblongata,  to  the  aroused  nerve-endings  of  her 
whole  body.  It  seemed  at  once  awe-inspiring  and  strange 
that  a  man  could  be  more  than  an  assistant  in  a  voyage 
of  discovery  beyond  the  matrimonial  Pillars  of  Hercules : 
that  he  might  verily  complete  her,  answer  the  lacks  and 
vacancies  of  her  whole  being,  body  and  soul.  She  was 
suddenly  in  the  peculiarly  inebriating  and  dangerous 
state  of  being  in  love  with  love,  a  state  as  new  as  that 
evening's  slow  moon-birth,  then  just  beginning  over  the 
hills  to  southeastward,  as  old  and  generally  flat  as  the 
moon  to  more  sophisticated  mortals. 

"  '  Aimer,  travailler,  esperer,  rever,'  "  she  repeated, 
after  Michelet,  and  found  no  sentimentality  in  the 
"Aimer"  at  least;  even  the  stolid  Boston  physician 
began  his  formula  with  "  Love." 

She  began  to  review  available  material  again,  with  love 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  237 

as  well  as  idealistic  adventure  in  mind.  What  a  poor 
lot  of  men  she  knew,  had  known !  and  yet,  she  cynically 
suspected,  her  acquaintance  among  marriageable  young 
males  had  been  quite  representative,  better  than  most 
girls',  perhaps — certainly  better  than  girls  in  small  towns, 
who  knew  no  young  men  with  ideas  above  the  making 
of  as  many  dirty  dollars  as  fast  as  they  could.  Like 
most  metropolitan  Easterners,  she  had  weird  ideas  of 
"  small  towns,"  located  indefinitely  somewhere  in  "  The 
West." 

But,  even  if  the  low  ideals  of  "  small  towns  "  were 
vaguely  far  away,  she  had  to  admit  an  embarrassing  lack 
of  available  candidates  for  mating  with  a  young  lady  for 
some  time  ripe  for  mating,  and  at  last  shocked  into  a 
realization  of  the  fact.  She  thought  of  Clement  Townes : 
she  had  discarded  him  as  not  good  timber  for  a  proper 
adventurer,  but  how  about  him  from  the  standpoint  of 
love?  To  her  surprise,  she  discovered  that  she  had 
judged  him  almost  exclusively  from  that  standpoint  in 
deciding  on  his  qualifications  for  a  First  Mate  on  the 
good  ship,  at  least  as  good  as  Christopher  Columbus' 
Nina,  that  had  to  be  baled  out  every  few  hours, — the 
good  ship  Free  Union.  She  had  discarded  him  because 
he  was  "  sissified,"  meaning  emotional,  unreliable,  not 
"  manly."  The  objection  had  come  from  a  love-motive, 
she  realized,  quite  as  much  as  from  an  adventuring  one. 
It  was  rather  distracting:  things  were  much  mixed  up. 
And  yet  Clement  was  the  most  available  candidate, 
granted  that  he  was  still,  or  had  ever  really  been,  a 
candidate — 

It  piqued  her  to  think  that  his  candidacy  might  have 
been  little  more  than  a  joke — it  had  really  gone  no  further 


238  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

than  that  ridiculous  sonnet,  and  an  attempt  to  kiss  her 
while  he  was  apologizing  for  it  afterward,  on  the  way  to 
her  mother's  apartment.  Now  that  she  was  seriously  con 
sidering  a  mate,  the  possibility  that  any  possible  candidate 
hadn't  been  serious  was — piquing,  to  say  the  least.  Espe 
cially  piquing  in  the  most  available  candidate — unless  God 
would  send  a  man  instead.  She  rose  and  walked  around 
the  room,  quite  warm  and  heated  all  over,  in  spite  of  the 
dying  fire.  She  really  wanted  a  man,  her  emotions  had 
been  shocked  and  ripened,  something  in  her  had  suddenly 
crystallized  as  a  current  of  electricity  will  suddenly 
crystallize  certain  saturated  solutions;  she  knew  that  she 
wanted  a  man,  was  more  certain  of  it  the  longer  she 
thought  about  it,  and  it  was  not  in  her  make-up  to  brook 
unnecessary  delay,  once  her  mind  had  been  made  up.  Let 
but  a  proper  and  available  man  show  his  face,  and  he 
would  have  a  hard  time  making  his  escape — granting,  for 
the  sake  of  argument,  that  he  would  have  wanted  to. 

An  hour  passed.  She  sat  before  the  embers  of  the 
fire;  she  had  lighted  a  silk-shaded  oil-lamp,  rather  than 
build  up  the  fire,  to  make  light  in  the  room;  the  room 
seemed  rather  warm,  even  with  the  fire  going  out.  She 
still  wanted  a  man:  not  feverishly,  as  before,  but  with 
a  quiet,  grim  determination. 

Steps  sounded  on  the  gravel  path  under  the  high 
studio  north  light,  on  the  gravel  path  leading  in  from 
the  village  road,  a  few  hundred  yards  eastward  from 
the  brook.  "  They've  come  for  Helen,"  she  told  herself, 
calming  the  sudden  startled  beating  of  her  heart.  The 
steps  went  up  onto  the  little  front  stoop;  they  seemed  to 
be  the  property  of  only  one  biped.  "  Or  Artie's  probably 
coming  back  to  get  me,"  she  hazarded.  There  was  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  239 

knock  at  the  door.  She  went  out  into  the  hall,  leaving 
the  communicating  door  open  so  that  the  light  streamed 
out  and  around  her;  she  was  glad  that  she  had  lighted 
the  lamp. 

The  opening  door  revealed  a  tall,  grizzly-bearded, 
Russian-looking  man,  with  the  quiet  smile  of  a  mediaeval 
saint,  the  bristling  hirsute  adornment  of  a  modern  Hot 
tentot.  His  unconventional  clothes  sagged  around  his 
lanky  figure;  he  allowed  his  large  brown  hands  to  hang 
by  the  thumbs  from  the  side  pockets  of  his  brown  cor 
duroy  trousers.  It  was  the  hermit  returning,  with  the 
other  recent  celebrants,  from  Cy  Wetmore's  ruined  party. 

"  We  thought,  perhaps,  we  might  be  able  to  do  some 
thing,"  he  said;  he  nodded  back  toward  the  road  to 
suggest  that  he  was  not  venturing  to  appear  alone. 
'  The  Major  was  appointed  to  come  in,  but  he's  not  very 
presentable.  We  were  at  Wetmore's,  you  know,  when 
you — appeared."  Evidently  he  recognized  her.  "  I 
want  to  tell  you — I've  been  commissioned  to  tell  you," 
he  resumed  easily,  "  that  we're  all — perfectly  responsible. 
The  punch — it  was  practically  nothing  but  ice-water;  if 
we  seemed  a  bit  noisy,  it  was  due  to — to  our  living  up 
to  what  was  expected  of  us,  you  know." 

Clotilde  knew  him  by  reputation :  everybody  who  knew 
anything  about  Woodbridge  did.  She  looked  at  him  in 
tently,  thinking  of  the  situation  that  had  developed  inside. 
The  hermit  looked  embarrassed,  cast  down  his  large  hazel 
eyes,  scraped  the  doorsill  uneasily  with  one  large,  rough 
shod  foot.  He  was  a  very  modest  man.  Still,  he  was  a 
man.  Everybody  said  that  about  him,  and  Clotilde  had 
no  difficulty  in  recognizing  the  truth  of  the  report. 

"If   there   was   anything   that   we — could   do?"   he 


240  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

suggested,  uneasy  beneath  the  general  survey  he  was 
undergoing;  and  added,  bashfully:  "  If  you  don't  believe 
my  story  about  the  punch,  I  shall  merely  be  undergoing 
the  fate  of  many  a  better  messenger  bringing  a  true  but 
incredible  report.  I  can  only  assure  you  that  we — all 
of  us—" 

"  Oh,  you  mustn't  think  that — I  believe  you,  of 
course!"  said  Clotilde.  "I  was  merely — thinking." 
She  thought  a  little  while  longer,  eyeing  him  intently. 
"  I — things  have  so  turned  out  that  I  volunteered  to  wait 
alone — and  the  conveyance — from  Kingston — seems  to 
have  been  delayed — " 

"  Oh — you're  not  alone?"  interrupted  the  hermit. 

"  Yes — I  wanted  to  be — I  don't  mind."  Then  why, 
she  asked  herself,  should  she  have  told  him?  Should  she 
tell  him  the  plain,  unadorned,  simple  truth — that  she  had 
decided  that  she  wanted  a  man,  wanted  one  very  much 
both  for  Modernistic  and  other  reasons — and  that  he 
looked  like  a  pretty  good  one?  The  idea  charmed  her. 
She  was  as  tense,  inside,  as  an  overdrawn  bow-string, 
more  irrational  for  keeping  her  inner  tensions  so  firmly 
in  hand. 

"  But  you  can't  wait  alone! "  protested  the  hermit, 
deeply  moved;  "  wait — I'll  get  one  or  two  of  the  fellows 
— somebody  can  give  the  Major  some  conventional 
clothes—" 

"  No — please,  no !  "  interrupted  Clotilde,  motioning 
him  back  to  her.  In  her  plain,  dark  gray  gown,  with 
her  plainly  pleached  hair,  she  looked  like  a  Quakeress, 
though  perhaps  a  Quakeress  from  a  light  opera.  Both 
her  cheeks  and  eyes  were  gleaming  as  if  with  stage 
make-up.  Nearby  death,  in  a  very  common  way,  had 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  241 

made  her  more  tinglingly  alive,  more  drunkenly  alive, 
than  she  had  ever  been  in  her  life  before. 

She  had  enough  common  sense  left  to  realize,  if  not 
that  she  was  in  danger  of  making  a  somewhat  ghastly 
display  of  herself,  that  the  hermit  would  run  like  a  rabbit 
if  she  revealed  her  designs  on  him.  He  was  too  old, 
anyway,  she  told  herself;  and  she  had  so  wound  herself 
up,  time  and  chance  had  so  wound  her  up,  that  she  needed 
to  go  slow.  It  was  a  denial  of  natural  impulses  not, 
perhaps,  strictly  Modernistic,  but  she  braced  herself  to 
meet  it. 

"  If  you  will  just  stop  at  the  nearest  telephone — I  think 
it's  at  the  Holmes  house — "  she  said,  "  and  telephone 
to  Kingston  about  the — the  conveyance  ordered  in  the 
name  of  Arthur  Kling,  that  will  be  all  that  will  be 
necessary." 

"  Oh — ah — really — "  gulped  the  hermit ;  he  rather 
resembled  Artie  in  his  vacuousness  before  simple  ideas. 
"  That  will  be  quite  all,"  she  said,  and  closed  the  door 
in  his  face. 

In  some  dudgeon  she  walked  back  into  the  living-room; 
he  had  irritated  her  by  being  a  man,  but  not  the  man. 
She  had  refused  him,  turned  him  away,  in  an  eminently 
proper  manner.  Her  cheeks  burned,  her  heart  pounded ; 
she  sat  down,  returning  to  thoughts  of  Clement.  At  least 
he  did  not  have  that  awful  timorousness,  that  vacuousness 
of  eye  and  manner.  He  had  a  trig  and  decisive  way 
about  him,  something  of  steel-springiness  to  match  her 
own. 

A  tapping  on  a  side  window  attracted  her  attention; 
it  was  the  hermit,  returned.  "  What — what  place  was  it 
we're  to  telephone  to  ?  "  he  called  hurriedly. 


242  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"The  Empire  Undertaking  Parlors!"  Clotilde  called 
back,  frowning  at  him.  The  hermit  vanished,  and  was 
seen  no  more. 

"  Oh,  my  dear !  "  Clotilde  apologized  to  Helen,  walking 
the  floor  in  a  flood  of  nervousness,  five  minutes  later; 
"  it  seems  criminal,  shameful,  that  all  these  petty  little 
details  of  life  should  go  on  around  you — these  undig 
nified,  wretched — my  own  state  of  mind  and  body — so 
far  removed  from  your  icy  reserve —  .And  yet,  dear,  life 
must  go  on!  Death  only  shows  us  how  little  time  we 
have  to  spend — how  important  it  is  for  us  to  live  while 
we're  alive — to  find  out  what  we  must  do,  and  do  it! 
Death — it's  like  a  whip  and  spur  to  us,  to  all  of  us  who 
have  the  strength  and  stamina  to  take  it  as  the  Eternal 
Life  Force  must  have  meant  it  to  be  taken!  It's  like 
wine,  Helen,  dear — you  didn't  see,  did  you,  how  it 
brought  Artie  and  Edna  to  a  decision  that  had  been 
hanging  fire  for  so  long — how  it  brought  them  out  of  a 
state  of  indecision  that  was  wrecking  them — unfortunate 
as  their  decision  may  be  in  certain  ways — 

"  And  now,  Helen — look  at  me !  "  continued  Clotilde, 
holding  out  both  her  slender,  delicately  curved,  gray- 
silken  arms.  "  Is  it  strange  or  unnatural  that,  in  the 
turmoil,  in  the  questioning  your  tragedy  has  brought 
upon  me — is  it  strange  or  unnatural  that  I  should  have 
discovered,  or  think  I've  discovered,  the  thing  I  need 
most — the  subconscious  need  for  which  sent  me  up  here 
hot-foot  to  shock  an  old  farmer  nearly  out  of  his  poor 
old  wits — to  stir  up  his  wife — the  cure  for  the  aching 
voids  in  my  life — that  even  Modernism,  which,  after  all, 
is  only  a  work,  travailler,  and  not  a  love — cannot  fill? 
Helen,  Helen,  I  think  I  need  a  mate,  dear!  Am  I  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  243 

poor,  weak-nerved  fool  to  get  all  excited  over  a  simple 
discovery  like  that?  Helen,  I  really  think — I'll  send — 
that  cablegram !  " 

The  decision  rested,  invigorated  her  as  much  as  Artie's 
and  Edna's  respective  decisions  had  rested  and  invigo 
rated  them.  As  they  had,  she  forgot  Helen  completely  in 
her  aroused  and  lively  concern  with  her  own  affairs.  She 
argued  with  herself,  now  that  she  had  decided,  that  the 
cablegram,  sending  a  cablegram  reading  "  Come.  Clo- 
tilde."  would  be  an  eminently  proper  thing  for  a  modern 
young  lady  to  do.  Of  course  a  quite  ancient  and  un- 
modern  young  lady  had  done  something  like  that  in  a 
quaint  little  book  called  "  L'Abbe  Constantin  " ;  it  had 
been  quite  au  fait,  at  various  periods  and  under  various 
disguises,  for  a  young  lady  to  offer  herself  to  a  young 
man  who  was  hardly  expecting  her — there  was  something 
romantic  and  exciting  about  it — like  going  off  to  find 
and  claim  a  recently  discovered  father — only  more  so. 

She  was  in  the  vivacious  age,  when  even  the  strings 
that  moved  her  so-called  search  for  truth  were  so  many 
vivacities — amatory,  emotional,  nearly  all, — and  the  years 
when  she  should  truly  begin  the  wooing,  or  making  of 
love  to  truth  for  truth's  sake,  were  not  yet  come.  She 
was  in  that  age  which,  most  of  all,  has  delighted  the 
novelists  and  novel-readers  of  every  generation;  she  was 
audacious,  perfectly  charming,  shameless,  full  of  youth's 
divine  fire,  disgusting,  tempestuously  lovely,  spiritual  or 
earthy,  lovable  or  regrettable,  according  to  what  facet 
of  her  many-sided  attitude  a  given  observer  might  be 
deceived  into  considering  typical. 

She  flitted  about  the  room,  the  death-chamber,  almost 
happy  and  exhilarated  enough  to  burst  into  song.  She 


244  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

hadn't  been  so  happy  since  she  discovered  that  she  was 
an  illegitimate  child,  the  daughter  of  a  discouraged  back 
woods  farmer,  instead  of  the  child  of  that  knight  of  the 
Gospel,  sans  peur  et  sans  reproche,  the  Reverend  Percy 
Westbrook,  whose  almost  infinite  mercy  had  shielded  and 
damned  her  childhood.  She  would  have  denied  the 
"  shielded,"  for  she  was  quite  modern;  the  directions  on 
the  old  maps  didn't  satisfy;  she  turned  them  upside  down, 
altered  "  north  "  to  "  south,"  and  set  out  to  see  what 
she  would  see.  No  proper  pilot  but  would  have  been 
horrified  by  her  venture  in  the  direction  of  Clement 
Townes,  or,  if  a  few  of  them  might  have  admitted  points 
of  resemblance  to  the  charming  frankness  of  the  young 
American  girl  in  "  L'Abbe  Constantin,"  they  would  have 
been  reconciled  to  it  on  grounds  far  removed  from 
Clotilde's. 

"  I'll  kill  a  whole  bushful  of  birds  with  one  stone !  " 
she  told  herself,  and  began  to  count  the  birds  in  that 
bush.  There  was,  one,  another  free-love  union  coming 
so  shortly  after  Helen's  failure  as  to  prove  Modernists, 
New  York  Modernists,  at  least,  undaunted;  and,  two,  a 
man  would  be  withdrawn  from  killing  his  kind — it  would 
be  especially  fine  if  she  could  persuade  him  to  face  shoot 
ing  as  a  deserter  for  Truth's  sake.  Three,  she  would  get 
a  man,  whom  she  needed,  just  as  a  man.  Four,  a  man 
whom  it  would  be  greatly  to  any  woman's  credit  to  mould 
into  a  steady  First  Mate.  Five,  a  stop-gap  for  the  many 
intimate  needs  and  vacancies  that  were  beginning  to 
suggest  themselves  so  plainly  in  her  every-day  life  that 
she  could  no  longer  deceive  herself  as  to  what  she  really 
needed.  If  the  last  three  numbers  seemed  to  overlap, 
their  importance  in  her  emotions,  if  not  in  her  mind, 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  245 

warranted  the  distinctions.  She  no  longer  thought  of 
Helen  at  all,  even  though  Helen's  life  was,  in  a  very  real 
way,  prolonged  in  her  more  vital  life,  in  the  more  vital 
life  of  the  Klings,  in  a  hundred  roused  and  stimulated 
lives  throughout  the  village  of  Woodbridge. 

Helen,  following  her  conventional  death,  had  set  Artie 
Kling  free  to  kill  Huns,  given  Edna  Kling  an  interest  in 
rats  that  might  help  many  a  poor  soldier  to  die  easier, 
had  goaded  Clotilde  Hooghtyling  into  active  search  for  a 
mate,  had  removed  Ethel  Hooghtyling's  danger  of  losing 
her  Hen  for  a  trip  around  the  continent,  and  kept  Cy 
Wetmore's  rented  cottage  from  being  burned  down. 
These,  her  post-mortem  doings,  were  even  then  widening, 
like  ripples  from  a  stone  thrown  into  a  pool,  throughout 
the  village,  the  town,  even  into  certain  remote  little 
corners  of  the  United  States. 

Carey  Beemis,  thanks  to  her,  was  at  that  hour  taking 
such  an  inventory  of  himself  as  he  had  never  taken  be 
fore;  he  was  almost  certain  never  to  participate  in  the 
ruining  of  another  girl's  life  as  he  had  participated  in 
the  ruining  of  hers.  Carey,  from  being  something  of  a 
menace  to  society,  might  be  converted  into  a  real  help  to 
it — if  his  reformation  stuck. 

Equally  near  at  hand,  Angus  Andrew  MacDonald  had 
conveyed  the  news  to  his  wife,  startling  her  out  of  her 
delight  at  seeing  him,  thanks  to  Helen,  so  soon  and  so 
sober.  She  stammered  that  Carey  was  a  brute,  and 
Angus  an  angel  by  comparison,  kissing  him  so  warmly, 
with  such  a  light  of  excitement  and  seriousness  on  her 
face,  that  Angus  forgot  Helen  completely  in  kissing  his 
wife  back.  Widespread  was  that  reaction  throughout 
Woodbridge  that  night;  marital  love  blazed  up  on  many 


246  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

a  cool  hearth,  driving  away  thoughts  of  Helen,  whose 
dead  hands  had  stirred  the  embers. 

The  hermit,  having  a  night-cap  with  the  Major  before 
blazing  logs,  said :  "  It  is  hardly  surprising  that  Miss 
Westbrook  should  have  been  in  that  state.  I  am  re 
minded  of  the  orgies  that  took  place  among  the  early 
Christians  during  the  crucifixions  at  Rome — under 
Vespasian,  wasn't  it?  Any  strong  stimulant  to  the 
emotions,  such  as  sudden,  violent  death — you  remember 
that  scene  in  What's-his-name's  memoirs — the  old  Italian 
roue — where  the  fine  party  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  in 
some  duchess's  boudoir  were  watching  the  hangings  on 
the  square  below  ?  " 

"  I'll  take  your  word  for  it,"  said  the  Major.  "  I'm 
too  crazy  to  get  among  some  good  lively  corpse-making 
in  France  to  bother  about  your  erotics.  Ten  to  one  you 
were  a  lot  safer  than  you  thought  you  were,  anyway. 
Dammit,  all  this  stir-up  for  one  little  shooting!  Over 
there  there  are  thousands  of  'em — hundreds  of  thousands 
of  'em — each  about  a  thousand  times  as  important,  to 
my  way  of  thinking.  Gad — let  me  at  it!"  The  Major 
chewed  his  pipe-stem,  a  more  fit-minded  and  ardent  war 
rior,  thanks  to  Helen,  than  he  had  been  in  many  a  day. 

"Well,  all  right— all  right — but  if  I'd  been  a  few 
years  younger — and  a  little  more  presentable,"  murmured 
the  hermit,  and  dreamed  of  Clotilde's  face,  and  wondered 
vaguely  whether  she  was  still  missing  him,  and  astutely 
opined  that  she  would  Bernard-Shaw  some  more  eligible 
man  before  long. 

Back  in  Helen  Hope's  little  studio,  Clotilde  was  con 
firming  his  prognosis.  She  had  got  as  far  as  getting 
paper  and  pencil  from  the  big  mission  writing  desk, 


chief  sign  of  Carey's  interest  in  the  studio's  furnishings. 

"  Clement  Townes,  Lafayette  Escadrille,  France," 
she  wrote;  and,  down  below,  in  huge,  firm,  black  script: 
"Come.  Clotilde."  How  would  he  take  it?  The  zest 
of  uncertainty,  the  possibilities  if  he  obeyed,  set  her  heart 
hammering,  her  cheeks  burning.  How  appropriate  to 
send  such  a  message  on  Carey  Beemis's  stationery,  to 
write  it  at  Carey  Beemis's  desk ! 

Appropriate — and  yet —  Some  softer  sentiment, 
some  unmodernistic,  shrinking  violet  of  a  sentiment, 
made  her  object  to  Carey's  desk,  to  Carey's  notepaper, 
to  Carey's  pencil. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  care — I  won't  write  it  on  his  stuff !  " 
she  objected,  frankly  giving  way  to  an  emotional  deli 
cacy,  and  feeling  much  improved  for  it.  She  tore  up  the 
message,  and  hunted  the  room  over  until  she  found  a 
pencil  that,  at  least,  might  have  been  Helen's.  Paper 
was  harder  to  find;  she  finally  descended  to  a  bit  of  the 
margin  torn  from  a  newspaper,  that  day's  issue  of  the 
New  York  Tribune.  She  was  reminded  of  Carey's 
mention  of  Clement's  letters  in  the  Tribune;  it  appeared 
that  Carey  took  the  Tribune,  and  so  had  seen  them. 
Clotilde  looked  through  the  paper,  in  some  little  flurry 
of  excitement,  but  Clement  had  nothing  in  it.  She  was 
disappointed,  and  inspired  to  wonder  what  sort  of  stuff 
he  had  been  doing,  yielding  further  to  a  purely  emotional 
reaction  in  feeling  a  bit  glad  that  it  hadn't  met  Carey 
Beemis's  approbation,  at  any  rate,  however  much  that 
feeling  reflected  on  her,  and  Carey's,  ideas  about  the 
brawl  in  Europe.  Had  Clement  changed — or  was  his 
reported  epistolary  waving  of  the  flag  merely  another  of 
his  boredom-inspired  vagaries? 


248  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

She  was  still  wondering  about  this  when  the  automo 
bile  conveyance,  at  last  arrived  from  Kingston,  drew  up 
in  front  of  the  house.  They'd  had  trouble  with  electrical 
connections,  explained  the  youthful  driver;  at  least, 
Clotilde  suspected,  after  a  sniff  of  his  breath,  alcoholic 
connections  had  been  excellent.  A  five-dollar  bill  re 
moved  his  pained  surprise  that  the  lady  he'd  come  for 
was  not  going  until  the  morning.  'Upon  his  pleased 
and  invigorated  state,  Clotilde  sprung  her  cablegram,  two 
ten-dollar  bills,  and  the  assurance  that  she  would  call  up 
in  the  morning  to  make  sure  that  the  cable  had  gone  as 
directed. 

After  the  message,  the  long  black  automobile,  the  de 
votional  driver  and  his  two  devotional  assistants  had  dis 
appeared  together,Clotilde  returned  to  the  remains  of  the 
fire.  She  put  on  two  new  sticks,  but  the  room  was  quite 
warm  and  cozy  even  without  more  fires  than  burned  in 
her  bosom.  She  dreamed,  speculated,  and  finally  dozed. 
Helen's  placidity  was  so  deep  that,  in  the  golden  twilight 
of  the  room,  she  seemed  faintly  striving  to  suppress  her 
amusement  at  the  ways  of  mortals. 

At  about  four  o'clock,  responding  to  the  general  thrill 
of  awakening  that  passes  through  most  animate  and  in 
animate  nature  at  the  first  hint  of  day,  Clotilde  awoke, 
shivering,  startled,  from  a  vision  of  the  war. 

She  calmed  herself  by  calling  to  mind  the  tendency 
of  all  natural  things  to  wake,  a  little  startled,  just  at  that 
hour.  Perhaps  that  startled  feeling,  common  to  the 
false-awakening  of  rabbits,  birds,  and  human  beings, 
derived  from  the  fact  that  the  preying  animals  went 
abroad,  at  that  hour,  to  find  still  sleeping  prey.  False- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  249 

dawn,  the  false-awakening  of  things,  most  of  them  to 
look  abroad  and  go  to  sleep  again  after  reassuring  them 
selves  that  there  was  no  danger — the  time  when  the  sheep 
bleat  in  the  fold,  a  little  forlornly,  the  soldier  awakens  to 
shiver  and  draw  his  coat  a  little  closer  around  him,  the 
time  when  preying  beasts  are  abroad,  and  modern  armies 
rouse  themselves  to  attack — thanks  to  tensions  of  body 
and  spirit,  to  her  unusual  sleeping  place,  Clotilde  ex 
perienced  it  with  all  its  reactions  of  subconscious  fear, 
gathered  its  age-old  terrors  into  a  half-waking  dream  that 
centered  about  its  infinitely  greater  modern  horror — The 
War. 

She  had  hardly  realized  that  The  War  was;  she 
had  the  feeble  powers  of  mental  projection  common  to 
half-developed,  highly  emotionalized  intellects.  With 
most  of  her  fellow  Modernists,  Radicals,  Rationalists — 
all  necessarily  founding  on  emotions  rather  than  on  well- 
mapped  facts — she  had  lacked  both  the  ability  and  the 
desire  to  react  to  a  thing  so  distant  and  undesirable  as 
The  War.  She  might  have  admitted  that  murder,  arson, 
rape,  torture,  starvation,  infanticide,  typhus,  and  the 
bubonic  plague  occurring  within  a  few  miles  of  her  home 
were  matters  sufficient  to  demand  her  attention.  Even 
if  they  had  broken  out  collectively  in  a  neighboring  state, 
she  might  have  admitted  that  she  had  an  interest  in  them, 
in  the  men  and  conditions  and  beliefs  responsible  for 
them.  But  Belgium,  France,  Germany,  Serbia,  Armenia 
were  too  far  away :  "  This  Most  Uninteresting  War," 
wrote  Carey  Beemis,  and  a  large  percentage  of  Ameri 
cans,  including  herself,  agreed  with  him.  Wholesale 
death  by  strangulation,  burned-out  lungs,  ripped-out 
bowels,  drowning,  slow  starvation,  and  such  recently  con- 


250  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

trolled  epidemics  as  were  once  considered  sufficiently 
ghastly  to  get  into  histories — these  were  uninteresting 
because  some  hours  and  miles  away,  uninteresting  al 
though  the  germs  of  all  of  them  had  been  wafted,  with 
the  certainty  of  death  and  taxes,  to  America,  even  while, 
with  the  callousness  if  lacking  the  artistic  appreciation, 
of  modern  Neros,  they  fiddled  and  adventured  along 
their  own  little  lines,  smiling  sadly  when  they  met  per 
sons  so  dense  as  to  be  disturbed  by  the  fact  that,  not 
a  city,  but  a  world,  was  burning:  not  a  few  miserable 
slaves  and  Jews,  but  the  finest  Christian  and  Pagan  races 
of  Europe,  Asia,  and  America  were  being  crucified.  Oh, 
strange  indifference !  American  Radicals,  low  and  high, 
drowsed  over  common  joys  and  cares.  Only  to  some 
of  them,  to  Clotilde  Hooghtyling  for  one,  by  accident 
largely,  by  the  accidental  centering  of  a  common  old 
before-dawn  fear,  did  some  faint  hint  of  the  war's 
Satanic  and  stark  magnificence  come  home.  As  a  person, 
stuffing  himself  for  experimental  purposes  on  fire,  fires, 
conflagrations,  and  seeing  one  polar  picture  in  the  midst 
of  his  stuffing,  will  almost  inevitably  dream  of  icebergs, 
so  Clotilde  dreamed  of  the  war,  relatively  insignificant  to 
the  vanishing  point  though  it  was  in  her  scheme  of  things. 

Clement  Townes  was  in  the  war;  Helen  Hope  had 
died  of  a  good  clean  relatively  pleasant  bullet-wound  in 
the  breast;  these  two  slight  incidents,  coming  like  un 
related,  mind-resting  pictures  in  the  midst  of  Clotilde's 
widespread  interest  in  different  matters,  inspired  her  to 
a  vision  of  war. 

It  was  a  conventional  thing,  the  vision  from  which 
she  awoke:  merely  a  sea  of  corpses  in  the  rain,  men's 
mutilated  bodies  lying  among  puddles  of  water,  over  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  251 

bit  of  ground  pitted  and  desolate  as  the  face  of  the  moon. 
No  cartoon  artist  could  have  drawn  a  more  conventional, 
uninspiring  bit  of  local  color :  the  thing  was  common  to 
cheapness.  It  was  only  the  fact  that  she  was  alone,  that 
she  was  nervous  and  tense,  Clotilde  told  herself,  that 
made  her  shudder  over  it  a  little,  even  after  she  had 
built  up  the  fire  and  made  herself  a  cup  of  tea.  Reso 
lutely  she  refused  to  think  of  it.  It  was  so  trite,  com 
monplace,  ordinary,  cheaply  customary:  a  bugaboo  to 
frighten  children.  Nevertheless,  even  the  comfortable 
warm  tea,  consumed  delicately  with  several  "  Society  Bis 
cuits  "  on  the  side,  did  not  altogether  relieve  a  certain 
nightmarish  tendency  to  shiver. 

She  was  quite  disgusted  with  herself ;  she  decided  that 
the  night  had  been  too  much  for  her,  that  she  needed 
diversion.  Once  more  she  turned  to  the  bookcase.  The 
"  Popular  Encyclopaedia  of  Familiar  Quotations,"  which 
she  had  noticed  was  not  the  familiar  Bartlett  collection, 
seemed  to  offer  diversion  in  the  least  taxing  form.  She 
took  it  down,  glanced  it  through  casually  without  being 
impressed  by  its  gems  of  thought,  and  looked  up 
"  Truth  "  in  the  index. 

There  was  Bryant's  familiar  mistake  to  the  effect  that 
Error,  wounded,  writhes  in  pain,  and  dies  among  her 
worshipers.  There,  also,  was  Holmes'  discovery  that 
"  Truth  is  invariable;  but  the  Srnithate  of  Truth  must 
always  differ  from  the  Brownate  of  Truth."  "  Clever, 
but  shallow,"  pronounced  Clotilde  wisely.  Further  along 
there  was  a  paragraph  from  Sir  Isaac  Newton's 
"  Memoirs  " : 

"  I  do  not  know  what  I  may  appear  to  the  world,  but 
to  myself  I  seem  to  have  been  only  like  a  boy  playing  on 


252  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  seashore,  and  diverting  myself  in  now  and  then 
finding  a  smooth  pebble,  or  a  prettier  shell  than  ordinary, 
whilst  the  great  ocean  of  Truth  lay  all  undiscovered  be 
fore  me." 

"  Goodness !  "  said  Clotilde ;  "  he  was  very  modest  con 
sidering  his  achievements,  wasn't  he?"  She  remem 
bered  having  seen  his  name,  always  near  the  top,  in  fifty 
lists  of  the  world's  ten  wisest  men,  featured  by  a  maga 
zine.  Several  little  thrills,  either  caused  by  Newton's  re 
markable  modesty  or  hang-overs  from  her  wretched  night 
mare  that  had  been  too  naturalistic  and  commonplace  to 
deserve  the  name  of  a  real  nightmare,  traversed  her 
spine.  She  preferred  to  attribute  them  to  Sir  Isaac's 
startling  modesty.  He  put  it  rather  well,  too — with  a 
calmness,  as  if  he  were  stating  a  belief  plain  and  familiar, 
finding  simple  and  honest  words  for  a  simple  and  honest 
confession.  Clotilde  began  to  warm,  and  to  wonder, 
gradually  to  reach  a  little  awe. 

"  That  is  more  interesting  than  any  war,"  she  told 
herself,  and  looked  for  a  long  time  at  the  fire  before 
falling  into  another  doze. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HENRY  HOOGHTYLING,  WHILE  CONTINUING  TO  VIN 
DICATE  HIS  RIGHT  TO  BE  CLASSED  WITH  THE 
ULTRA-MODERNISTS,  GETS  RID  OF  SOME  PHILOS 
OPHY  ON  COWS  VS.  HEIFERS— AND  ETHEL  CAMOU 
FLAGES  ANOTHER  STRAY 

THE  next  afternoon,  at  three  o'clock,  Mr.  Henry 
Hooghtyling  inaugurated  that  series  of  close  communions 
with  Clotilde  which  she,  as  his  daughter,  had  felt  and 
declared  to  be  her  right.  He  got  going  under  a  spanking 
breeze,  thanks  to  the  fact  that  Clotilde  had  been  wakened 
from  a  sound  sleep  to  greet  him : 

"  I've  brung  you  a  pound  of  butter  and  a  pie  from 
Ethel;  there  are  folks  that  says  Ethel's  butter  is  about 
the  best  they  ever  put  into  their  mouths,  but  as  for  me 
I  don't  think  it  holds  a  candle  to  her  pie.  Not  but  what 
it  ain't  prime  butter,  neither." 

"  Sit  down,"  Clotilde  invited  him,  depositing  the  basket 
on  the  living-room  table,  near  the  open  fire.  She  and 
Henry  had  the  Klings'  main  room  to  themselves.  Edna 
was  madly  reading  up  on  rats,  out  in  the  coolish  kitchen, 
and  Artie  was  upstairs  in  his  studio,  painting  for  dear 
life;  they  had  decided,  on  second  consideration,  that  he 
ought  to  finish  up  a  few  things  before  volunteering;  he 
might  never  come  back,  and  he  modestly  suggested  that, 
if  he  were  killed  in  the  trenches,  his  pictures  might  be 
come  valuable,  at  least  valuable  enough  to  warrant  finish 
ing  what  he  had  on  hand  for  Edna's  sake. 

253 


254  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Henry  continued,  eyeing  the  basket :  "If  I  was  to 
make  a  suggestion,  I  wouldn't  put  that  butter  so  near 
the  fire — unless,  of  course,  you  like  your  butter  soft. 
Myself,  I  like  it  purty  solid,  purty  solid;  even  in  summer 
Ethel  keeps  it  in  the  cellar,  so's  it  won't  get  mussy. 
We  got  a  tol'ble  fine  cellar,  though  we  been  bothered  a 
little  with  rats.  Rats'll  get  in  anywhere,  it  do  beat  all 
what  a  nose  they  got  for  vittals.  Every  fall,  after 
butcherin',  I  go  round  pluggin'  up  all  the  holes,  puttin' 
pizen  round  for  'em — what  a  nose  them  animals  has 
got  for  fresh  meat !  I've  knowed  'em  to  eat — " 

"Oh,  let's  not  talk  about  rats!"  protested  Clotilde 
faintly.  She  looked  up  from  depositing  the  basket  on 
the  floor  near  the  front  window.  She  was  bilious-look 
ing,  washed-out,  and  she  hadn't  taken  time  to  do  her 
hair  neatly. 

"Sure  not!  Excuse  me — of  course  they  ain't  fit  to 
talk  about — and  yet  I  always  did  say  a  person'd  better 
not  be  too  feist  about  what  he  talks  about — a  healthy 
person  can  talk  about  nearly  anything — that  is,  if  he's 
real  hearty.  '  'Twas  a  hearty  man  that  et  the  toad/  we 
say  up  our  way;  not  that  I'd  hanker  after  such  vittals, 
but  just  showin'  what  a  hearty  person  can  stand — the 
healthier  a  person  is,  the  less  he'll  worry  about  such 
things.  Maybe  you  ain't  feelin'  quite  so  peart  this  after 
noon  ?  " 

Clotilde  made  an  effort  to  seem  pearter.  "  You're 
perfectly  right,  Mr.  Hooghtlying;  I  am  the  last  person 
to  object  to  perfect  frankness — "  • 

"  Sure,  that's  what  I  thought—'  She's  the  soul  of 
frankness,  you  don't  want  to  misjudge  her  just  because 
she  ain't  afraid  to  use  words  in  their  right  meanin's,' 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  255 

I  says  to  Ethel.  '  Times  has  changed  among  the  young 
folks/  I  said,  '  since  you  and  I  was  young — and  we  never 
had  much  chances  at  an  eddication,  anyway.'  Why, 
only  one  day  in  school  for  Ethel — for  all  she's  so  well- 
read — and  me,  I  never  went  to  school  more'n  a  couple 
winters,  and  was  raisin'  the  devil  so  hard  than  I  didn't 
learn  much.  What  a  boy  won't  do!  Seems  like  they 
had  the  very  devil  in  'em !  I  tell  you,  I've  learned  a  lot, 
just  talkin'  to  you — about  bein'  frank,  not  trying  to  hide 
things,  y'know.  You  been  an  eye-opener  to  me  along 
them  lines — I'd  never  a-believed  it!" 

He  shook  his  head,  blinking  at  her;  Clotilde  said  noth 
ing.  She  hoped  he  might  run  down,  soon,  and  go  away. 
Her  yearning  to  get  real  well  acquainted  with  him,  to 
pursue  Modernistic  themes  under  his  fatherly  direction, 
had  mostly  evaporated. 

But  Henry  was  full  of  conversation,  full  and  run 
ning  over;  seldom  had  such  stimulation  for  oral  activity 
come  his  way.  He  had  thought  of  a  thousand  things 
based  on  remembered  sentiments  delivered  by  Clotilde, 
that  he  wanted  to  say,  a  thousand  things  had  happened 
that  he  wanted  to  tell  her  about. 

He  forged  ahead :  "  Honest,  when  Ethel  hove  in  sight 
last  night — well,  maybe  I  looked  calm,  but  I  says  to  my 
self,  '  Now  the  beans  is  spilled — God  help  us  all ! '  Why, 
sir — I  mean  Miss — that's  exactly  what  I  said,  under  my 
breath  like — what  breath  I  had  left.  I  wouldn't  a-been 
s'prised  if  Ethel'd  lit  right  into  both  of  us — began  to 
throw  things — stones,  sticks — begun  to  claw  and  scream. 
She  forgets  herself,  Ethel  does,  once  every  so  often — but 
she's  improvin'.  I  think  it  was  all  bein'  dressed  up  in 
her  new  bonnet  and  cloak  kep'  her  restrained  last  night — 


256  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

I  told  her  that,  and  she  said  she  guessed  I  was  right. 
Wonderful  what  clothes  will  do — make  you  feel  like  a 
diff'rent  person,  a'most.  In  her  old  kitchen  apron,  I've 
knowed  Ethel  to  throw  stove-lids — not  but  what  I  admit 
I  give  her  some  cause — yes,  some  cause.  But  look  how 
she  took  it — just  like  you  said ! 

"  I  was  wrong,  you  was  right,"  said  Henry;  "  you  said 
she'd  oughter  be  glad  to  find  out  you  was  my  daughter 
and,  once  she  got  her  head  goin',  by  tarnation  she  was! 
Yes — you  was  right!  She  said  it  seemed  such  a  long 
way  off,  and  I'd  been  so  stiddy  for  so  long  she  could 
forget  it,  if  they  was  any  wrong  done  between  me  and 
your  ma — and,  says  she,  considerin'  what  a  fine-lookin' 
girl  you  are,  and  seein's  your  ma  looked  like  you — I  told 
her  your  ma  looked  a  little  like  you,  and  so  she  did,  girl, 
so  she  did ! — '  Well,'  says  Ethel,  late  last  night,  after 
we'd  had  a  long  talk,  me  takin'  your  part,  '  well,'  she 
says,  '  Hen,  I  can't  say's  I  blame  you.  Any  other  young 
man'd  a-done  the  same  thing  if  he'd  a-got  the  chance — 
probably  she  tempted  you,'  says  Ethel.  I  toldiier,  for 
the  sake  of  the  honest  truth,  it  was  all  my  fault,  but 
Ethel,  she  wouldn't  believe  me.  '  Women's  got  more 
ways  of  temptin'  a  man  than  any  man,  even  if  he's  wise 
as  you,  Hen — '  She  thinks  I'm  purty  keen,  Ethel  does, 
I  guess  I  got  'er  fooled  there,  but  I  never  let  on.  '  Well,' 
says  Ethel,  '  I  guess  it  was  her  fault  as  much  as  yourn — 
and  I  respect  you  for  not  blowin'  round  about  it,'  says 
Ethel. 

"  '  I  guess  it's  somethin','  says  Ethel,  '  for  an  old 
farmer  couple  like  us  to  have  a  daughter's  fine  and  slick 
as  that.'  You  know,  Ethel,  she  says,  as  a  matter  of  plain 
truth  and  nothin'  but  the  truth,  she's  kinda  your  step- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  257 

mother,  y'  know."  Henry  thoughtfully  rubbed  his  chin; 
Clotilde  thoughtfully  rubbed  her  forehead.  "  I've  thought 
about  it,  and  maybe,  you  know,  she's  right.  She  showed 
me  in  the  dictionary  where  it  said  '  Stepmother :  a 
woman  who  is  the  wife  of  a  child's  father,  but  not  its 
mother/  Looks  to  me  like  it  was  the  truth;  and  Ethel 
said,  since  you  had  such  strong  feelin's  for  the  truth, 
you  might  like  to  think  of  her  as  your  stepmother.  She 
said  she  wouldn't  have  no  objections,  if  you  wouldn't?" 

Clotilde,  answering  his  upward  inflection,  admitted: 
"  Yes — it  does  seem  that  she's  right — " 

Henry  proceeded :  "  I  don't  see  no  way  o'  gettin' 
'round  that,  though  I  must  say  I  can't  agree  with  her 
sayin'  she's  really  more  your  mother'n  anybody  else, 
seein's  she  regular  married  to  your  real  father,  while 
your  other  mother, — Ah — you  know — wasn't — exactly 
— not  exactly.  I  told  Ethel  marriage  wasn't  everything 
— she  couldn't  go  claimin'  to  be  your  most  important 
mother — just  because  of  marriage  vows.  When  you  get 
right  down  to  it,  I  says,  marriage  ain't  near  so  important 
as  some  other  things." 

He  was  a  little  doubtful  about  this  Radicalism;  at 
least  his  waiting  suggested  a  desire  for  a  stamp  of 
approval  from  a  real  Radical. 

"  You're  perfectly  right,"  Clotilde  told  him. 

"  I  thought  I  was — and  I'll  bring  her  around,"  said 
Henry.  "  She  was  all  for  bringin'  you  right  up  and 
havin'  you  settle  down  with  us — leastwise,  till  you  got 
married,  as  the  other  children  did.  Ethel's — well,  she's 
what  you  might  call  conventional-minded,  you  know, 
spite  of  how  well  she's  took  all  this.  She  says  that  other 
woman — your  real  ma,  you  know — Ethel,  she  says  she's 


258  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

no  fit  person  to  have  your  bringin'  up — and  the  law,  she 
says,  will  back  her  up — she  says  she's  read  about  it  any 
number  o'  places,  children  took  from  parents  that  been 
a  bit — free-like,  you  know. 

"  But  I'll  get  her  over  that — don't  you  worry !  "  Henry 
continued  hastily,  answering  Clotilde's  air.  "  She  likes 
to  run  things,  Ethel  does,  and  when  I  ask  her  if  she  ain't 
got  all  she  can  tend  to  with  her  married  children,  she 
says  it  ain't  the  same's  when  you  got  a  daughter,  right  in 
your  own  house,  unmarried.  I  guess,  speakin'  confi- 
dential-like,  you  better  go  slow  'bout  comin'  up  to  board 
— we  decided,  o'  course,  you  could  board  with  us — that 
is,  you  better  go  slow  if  you  don't  hanker  a'ter  a  right 
smart  lot  o' — o'  motherin'." 

Clotilde  managed  to  put  in :  "  I'll  have  to  stay  with 
the  Klings  for  the  present;  Arthur  Kling's  going  away 
to  the  war,  and  Mrs.  Kling  really  needs  me  to  keep  her 
company.  I  hope,  however,  that  I'll  see  both  you  and 
Ethel — from  time  to  time.  I  intended  to  get  up  this 
afternoon  to  see  you — " 

"That's  all  right,"  Henry  resumed;  "  if  it  has  any 
thing  to  do  with  the  war,  we  can  get  along  without  you — 
though  personally,  much  as  I'd  like  to  see  that  German 
Kaiser  get  his  head  chopped  off,  I  don't  see  what  cause 
this  country's  got  to  go  meddlin'  into  it.  O'  course  they 
sunk  a  few  of  our  ships — but  what  business  did  we  have 
sendin'  a  lot  o'  stuff  over  to  kill  'em,  I  say.  I  say,  don't 
go  mixin'  in  fights  that's  goin'  on  t'other  side  o'  the  vil 
lage." 

"  Yes — that's  what  I  think,"  agreed  Clotilde;  but  even 
this  stanch  Modernistic  interpretation  of  the  European 
brawl  did  not  greatly  stir  her.  She  was  keeping  Edna 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  259 

out  of  the  only  comfortable  room  in  the  house,  perhaps 
Henry's  steady  conversation  was  disturbing  Edna's 
studies.  "I'm  rather  tired  this  afternoon;  we — there 
was  an  unfortunate  death  in  the  village  last  night,"  said 
Clotilde. 

A  new  flood-gate  was  opened  for  Henry's  volubility: 
"  Ah-ho-oh?  "  He  allowed  his  head  to  fall  back,  leaving 
his  mouth  open,  in  his  customary  gesture  of  polite  sur 
prise,  customarily  revealing  his  dark  misfortunes  in  the 
way  of  teeth.  Clotilde  restrained  an  impulse  to  speak 
frankly,  plainly  to  him  on  the  subject  of  teeth;  she  hesi 
tated  to  open  up  a  new  subject. 

"  Yes — referrin'  to  Miss  Hope  that  shot  herself — too 
bad,"  said  Henry;  it  appeared  that  she  had  opened  up  a 
new  subject,  anyway.  "  We  heard  about  it  last  evenin', 
neighbor  goin'  by  told  us,  but  he  misrecollected  the  name, 
and  Ethel  wouldn't  rest  till  I  went  down  to  the  Brookses' 
and  telephoned  to  find  out.  Ethel  thought  maybe  it 
might  be  you,  and  she  said,  right  way,  she'd  be  down 
right  sorry  if  it  was.  That  was  what  begun  to  bring 
her  round,  I  guess :  she  begun  to  think  how  it  'ud  be  if 
you'd  gone  and  killed  yourself.  First  thing  I  knew  she 
was  sayin'  you  was  a  fine  girl,  and  she  didn't  have  no 
objections  to  tellin'  it  round,  like  you  said,  that  I  was  your 
father,  then  she  sprung  this  stepmother  stuff,  and  after 
that  she  couldn't  a-thought  more  of  you  if  you  was  her 
own  daughter.  You  might  be  headstrong,  she  said,  but 
what  could  folks  expect,  considerin'  the  person'd  who 
brought  you  up — you  know,  she'll  have  it,  right  or  wrong, 
that  your  ma  was  more  to  blame  than  I  was — but  that's 
the  way  with  women,  always  thinkin'  their  husbands  is 
about  right. 


260  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  This  mornin',"  said  Henry,  "  she  woke  up — first 
time  I  ain't  had  to  wake  her  I  don't  know  when — just  to 
tell  me  she  was  glad  of  everything,  and  she  thought  the 
truth  had  ought  to  come  out  right  away.  She  went 
down  and  told  Sarah,  that's  our  stepdaughter  lives  near 
us,  right  after  breakfast,  breakin'  it  easy  so's  Sarah 
wouldn't  be  shocked;  but  Sarah  wasn't  shocked,  soon's 
she  could  believe  it,  she  just  kep'  sayin' :  '  Well,  goo-oo- 
ood  night!  Who'd  ever  thought  it  o'  paw?'  She's 
crazy  to  meet  you,  Sarah  is — and  so's  Ethel,  now  she 
sees  how  good  everybody's  takin'  it.  After  tellin'  Sarah, 
she  and  Sarah  both  went  down  to  the  Brookses',  and 
broke  it  to  Mrs.  Brooks,  and  old  Mrs.  Poindexter,  that's 
Mrs.  Brooks'  mother,  and  not  one  of  'em  was  shocked,  she 
said.  You  was  right — 'pears  like  the  truth  don't  do  no 
harm,  not's  much  harm  as  most  people'd  expect.  They're 
all  crazy  to  meet  you.  When  you  didn't  come  to  din 
ner,  and  when  two  o'clock  came,  and  still  you  wasn't 
in  sight,  they  was  nothin'  for  it  but  I  must  go  right  down 
and  fetch  you  up."  Henry,  by  devious  ways,  had  ar 
rived  at  the  basic  purpose  of  his  mission.  "  'Course  I 
told  'em  you  might  not  be  feelin'  like  goin'  up,  but  they 
was  nothin'  to  it  but  I  had  to  go  down  and  bring  you 
back  up  if  I  could." 

Clotilde  said,  faintly :  "  As  I  explained,  I  am  rather 
tired—" 

"  I  could  get  a  rig  for  you — Ethel  said,  o'  course,  you'd 
prob'ly  expect  me  to  get  a  rig,"  interrupted  Henry.  "  If 
it  was  only  that  you  was  tired,  your  room's  all  fixed  for 
you—" 

"  But  I  have  to  stay  here — for  the  present — " 

"  O'  course,  I  told  'em  prob'ly  you  wouldn't  come,  but 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  261 

Ethel,  she  said  you'd  naturally  rather  feel  more  at  home 
under  your  own  father's  roof — seein's  how  you  walked 
all  the  way  up  just  to  get  boardin'  accommodations — and 
she,  not  knowin'  how  things  stood,  bein'  kinda  short  with 
you—" 

"  I'm  awfully  glad  she's  so — so  softened  toward  me, 
but  really—" 

"  She  said  she  actually  wouldn't  feel  right  without  you 
come  up  right  way,  so  she  could  apologize — she'd  do 
anything  to  make  you  feel  at  home.  She  said  she  wanted 
you  to  feel  that  our  house  was  your  home,  and  she  was 
your  real  mother — she  did  for  a  fact." 

"  I'm  a  lot  obliged  to  her — for  her  way  of  taking  it," 
said  Clotilde,  "  but  I'm  afraid,  Mr.  Hooghtyling — " 

Henry  anticipated  a  refusal :  "  Well,  we  won't  talk 
about  it  no  further — we'll  talk  about  somethin'  else. 
Naturally,  it's  a  thing  you'd  want  time  to  make  up  your 
mind  about,  though  Ethel  did  think,  seein's  I  told  her 
what  you  said  about  gettin'  acquainted  and  wantin'  to 
board  with  us,  Ethel  did  think  maybe  you'd  just  want  to 
come  right  home.  She's  been  workin'  all  mornin'  gettin' 
things  ready  for  you,  and  she's  got  me  out  fixin'  up  a 
stoodlum  where  you  could  do  your  paintin'  with  a  north 
light,  like  you  said — " 

"  Oh,  I'm  sorry  I—" 

"  No  trouble  'tall,  none  'tall !  "  insisted  Henry.  "  Glad 
to  do  it — like  you  said,  I'm  your  father,  and  I  got  a 
responsibility  to  you.  Though  I  don't  agree  with  Ethel 
that,  bein'  your  father,  I  got  a  right  to  order  you  to  come 
right  up,  whether  you  want  to  or  not — no,  I  don't  'gree 
with  her!  Nor  do  I  'gree  with  her  she's  got  any  rights 
over  you  just  because  she's  your  step-ma,  neither.  I 


262  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

say,  if  you  come,  you  got  to  do  it  of  your  own  free  will 
— 'thout  no  orderin'  round.  You  needn't  be  'fraid, 
neither,  Ethel's  goin'  to  order  you  round  too  much,  if 
that's  what's  worryin'  you — Ethel  don't  go  much  further 
when  I  put  my  foot  down — and  it's  lucky  for  both  me 
and  her  she  don't.  She's  impulsive,  Ethel  is — but  she's 
always  ready  to  listen  to  reason — 'cept  when  she  forgits 
herself — which  ain't  often,  no,  that  ain't  often.  You 
don't  want  to  let  that  worry  you.  And  if  any  such  ideas 
should  be  what's  keepin'  you  from  goin'  up  along  with 
me—" 

"  No,  no !  "  insisted  Clotilde,  a  little  wildly ;  a  faint, 
suppressed  burble  of  laughter  from  the  direction  of  the 
kitchen  door  startled  her;  the  kitchen  door,  she  noticed, 
was  slightly  ajar.  "The  simple  fact  is,  Mr.  Hooghty- 
ling,  I'm  too  tired  just  now — " 

Henry  was  but  slightly  put  back  by  her  unfilial  tone, 
by  her  unfilial  use  of  the  "  Mr.  Hooghtyling."  "  Well, 
we  won't  talk  about  it,"  he  repeated ;  "  it's,  nat'rally,  a 
thing  you'd  need  time  to  make  up  your  mind  about,  not 
but  what  I  thought,  and  Ethel  'greed  with  me,  that  you 
was  a  quick  one  to  make  up  your  mind,  and  we  both 
talked  it  all  over,  and  we  thought,  considerin'  specially 
all  you  said  to  me  that  first  afternoon,  your  mind  was 
all  made  up.  Of  course  'twouldn't  tire  you  much  to  ride 
up — and  you  could  lay  down  right  away,  soon's  you'd 
met  Sarah,  and  Mrs.  Brooks,  and  Mrs.  Poindexter 
— and  we  could  bring  your  supper  right  up  to  your  room 
on  a  tray — we  saved  some  o'  the  chicken  that  was  to  be 
had  for  dinner — Ethel,  I  guess  she  misunderstood  you 
when  you  said  just  as  we  was  partin'  there  in  the  road 
that  you'd  come  up  to  dinner  with  a  great  deal  of  pleas- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  263 

ure,  just  as  you  and  Ethel  was  shakin'  hands,  not  that  I 
ever  had  much  hopes  that  Ethel'd  do  it  when  I  told  her 
to;  but  she's  warmed  to  you  since  then,  Ethel  has,  you'd 
be  surprised — she  says  all  you  need's  a  little  motherin' 
by  her — she  don't  'prove  of  your  bringin'  up,  you  know, 
though  I  tell  her—" 

"  And  'tain't  as  if  you  needed  to  worry  'bout  the  rig, 
either,"  Henry  continued,  hurriedly  transferring  to  a  new 
point  to  forestall  an  attempted  objection  from  Clotilde. 
"  I  took  the  liberty  o'  hirin'  a  rig — just  on  the  chance  you 
might  be  comin'  back  with  me,  you  know — though  I 
thought  you'd  prob'ly  not  feel  like  comin' — Ethel  prob'ly 
made  a  mistake  invitin'  all  those  women  to  meet  you, 
and  not  warnin'  you  beforehand —  Anyway,  you  needn't 
worry  'bout  the  rig,  cause  it's  already  hired,  and  I'll 
have  to  pay  for  it  whether  you  come  or  not — and  the 
little  extra  I'd  have  to  pay  to  have  it  take  us 
back  up  the  hill  wouldn't  'mount  to  nawthin' — nawthin' 
'tail." 

"  Please,  Mr.  Hooghtyling — not  this  afternoon !  " 

"  Well — I  don't  blame  you — and,  as  your  father,  I 
ain't  givin'  no  orders.  I  only  advise  you  to  come — if 
you  feel  like  it.  I  wouldn't  mention  it  'tall,  no  further, 
if  I  didn't  know  Ethel  was  goin'  to  be  disjointed,  mighty 
hard  disjointed,  if  I  don't  bring  you  back  with  me. 
She's  got  her  mind  all  made  up  to  have  you,  to  be  a 
stepmother  to  you,  and  she  had  a  hard  time  comin'  to 
it,  and  when  a  person  comes  round  to  an  idea  kinda 
hard,  they  have  a  hard  time  comin'  loose  from  it.  But 
if  you  really  feel  you'd  ought  not  to  come  till  tomorrow 
she'll  have  to  stand  it,  I  guess." 

"  I  really  do — I  really  fear — " 


264  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Well,  if  you  was  to  make  it  in  time  for  dinner  to- 
morry — that's  'bout  half -past  'leven — maybe  't  wouldn't 
be  such  a  dis'pointment." 

Clotilde  arose,  stepped  toward  the  door.  "  Will  you 
forgive  me  if  I — I  tell  you  that  I  have  a  frightful  head 
ache,  and  must  go  back  to  bed — dear  Mr.  Hooghtyling?  " 
she  pleaded. 

"  Aw,  now,  that's  too  bad ! "  he  soothed  her,  from 
the  depths  of  his  chair.  "  Ethel's  a  great  hand  for  a 
headache,  the  remedies  that  woman's  got!  Maybe  a 
little  ride  in  the  open  air — it's  a  lot  better  not  to  go  to 
bed  with  a  headache  less'n  a  person  just  can't  keep  their 
feet.  Is  your — "  He  made  round  eyes,  looked  serious 
and  doubtful,  whispered  from  a  discreetly  rounded 
mouth :  "  bowels  open  ?  " 

"  Hoo-ooh!  "  burst  Edna's  voice,  in  a  hysterical  shriek, 
from  the  crack  of  the  kitchen  door.  Henry  sat  forward, 
staring  and  startled. 

"  You  see — you  see — "  gasped  Clotilde,  almost  hys 
terical  herself :  "  We — both,  Mrs.  Kling  and  I — are 
quite  unnerved  by  our  recent — recent —  Really,  I  think 
I  must  ask  you  to  go,  while  I  look  after  poor  Edna! 
Mrs.  Kling — we  are  greatly  upset — especially  Mrs.  Kling 
— in  no  position  to  stand — " 

"  Sure — yes — she  did  sound — kinda  bad,"  admitted 
Henry,  rising  with  tremulous  haste,  craning  his  slender 
neck  around  in  search  of  his  hat.  Clotilde  found  it  for 
him,  put  it  onto  his  head,  and  gently  assisted  him  toward 
the  door.  "  Say — if  I  was  to  make  bold  to  make  a  sug 
gestion — "  he  hazarded,  holding  back,  creeping  along; 
"  maybe  a  little  ride  in  the  open  air'd  do  your  friend  good, 
too — and  Ethel'd  be  glad  to  see  her — and  she's  great  on 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  265 

remedies — Ethel  is — anything  a  person's  got  wrong  with 
'em—" 

"  No,  thank  you,  not  today!  "  insisted  Clotilde,  pulling 
him  along  by  main  force,  marveling,  even  in  her  state  of 
near-hysteria,  at  the  skeleton-like  thinness  of  the  arm  she 
held.  "  I  must  go  to  her — there — remember  me 
kindly  to — to  Mrs.  Hooghtyling — and  all  the  other 
ladies !  "  She  got  him  out  on  the  front  porch,  prepared 
to  shut  the  door,  but  he  resisted  so  well,  coming  a  step 
back  into  the  doorway  in  spite  of  all  her  exerted  strength, 
that  she  couldn't  shut  him  out.  "  Then  it's  half-past 
eleven  tomorrow — me  comin'  for  you  with  a  rig  at  'bout 
'leven,  say  ?  " 

"  Oh,  let's  not  decide—" 

He  had  taken  a  deep  breath,  he  proceeded:  "  'Course 
I  know  prob'ly  you  can't  come,  but  I  was  just  thinkin' 
William,  he's  Sarah's  husband,  might  get  off  for  dinner, 
and  in  some  ways  it  might  be  better'n  if  you  come  today 
— just  the  fam'ly — not  but  what  Mrs.  Brooks  and  Mrs. 
Poindexter — " 

He  was  astonishingly  wiry  and  determined,  but  Clotilde 
pushed  him  bodily  from  the  doorsill.  "  All  right,"  she 
gasped,  into  the  momentary  vacuum  caused  by  her  exer 
tion  of  physical  strength.  "  All  right — tomorrow  at 
eleven!  Now — good-by!"  Thereupon,  having  been 
false  to  most  of  her  idea  of  frank,  plain  dealing,  espe 
cially  as  between  men  and  women,  she  shut  the  door  in 
his  astonished,  but  gratified,  distinctly  gratified,  face. 
If  a  conventional  acceptance,  an  acceptance  that  she  had 
no  intention  whatever  of  living  up  to,  gratified  him — 
was  the  only  way  of  stopping  his  nerve-macerating  flow 


266  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

of  language —  She  dropped  into  the  chair  he  had  left, 
and  Edna  rushed  to  her  assistance. 

"  My  dear !  "  gasped  Edna,  charing  her  wrists,  "  I  give 
you  up — you  can't  stay  here — you  must  fly  to  New  York 
at  once ! " 

"  Nonsense !  "  Clotilde  was  recovering  rapidly.  "  It 
was  only  that  I'd  just  got  to  sleep — when  his  call — " 

Edna  apologized :  "  I  tried  to  side-track  him — I 
thought  I  had — but  he  just  talked  on  and  on,  revolving 
round  the  subject  of  waking  you — not  that  he  wanted  to 
disturb  you — until  I  was  frantic!  There  was  nothing 
to  do  but  wake  you,  or  throw  him  out,  bouncer-fashion, 
as  you  did!  Really,  dear — not  joking:  if  you  want  to 
leave  for  New  York  this  evening,  to  escape  the  hectic 
excitement  of  our  little  Catskill  retreat — " 

"  Nonsense !  "  repeated  Clotilde.  "  I'm  going  to  keep 
house  for  you  two  war-crazy  idiots  until  you  go — we  can 
darken  the  windows,  if  necessary — and  refuse  to  an 
swer  the  knocker. — As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  under 
stand,  I'm  glad  that  the  Hooghtylings  have  taken  to  me 
as  they  have;  and  when  I  get  a  little  more  time,  I'm 
going  to  get  acquainted  with  them." 

"  Oh,  Clo',  you're  not— " 

"  I  am,  too!  Don't  you  see  it  wasn't  his  fault  that  he 
wasn't  welcome,  just  now,  with  everything  in  this  house 
so  upset?  Henry  is  all  right — so's  Ethel — so  are  the 
other  ladies  so  anxious  to  meet  me.  After  you  and  Artie 
are  embarked  on  your  hectic  adventures,  I'm  going  to 
learn  something  about  life  from  them — real  life — they 
can  teach  me  a  lot,  dear — much  more  than  killing  rats  and 
Germans  can  teach  you  and  Artie!  Your  sense  of  pro 
portion  is  all  shot  to  hell,  dear,  along  with  your -nerves. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  267 

Your  beastly  little  excrescence  of  a  war  can't  hold  a 
candle  to  ordinary,  universal,  healthy,  modern  human 
nature !  Take  that,  now,  and  go  back  to  your  rats !  " 

Edna  picked  up  her  book,  and  sighed.  "  I  don't  know 
whom  you're  quoting,  dear,  but  that  isn't  such  bad  dope. 
Carl  Larsen,  the  Swedish  artist,  was  up  to  tea  a  few  days 
ago,  and  he  swore  himself  blue  in  the  face  that  this  gen 
eration  would  be  famous  in  history  because  Cezanne  lived 
in  it — not  on  account  of  the  war.  Everybody  to  his 
taste." 

"  Cezanne — pshaw — I  suppose  Larsen's  pro-German — 
most  Swedes  are — and  I  notice  most  pro-Germans  are 
belittling  the  importance  of  the  war  these  days.  I  agree 
with  Henry — I'd  like  to  see  the  Kaiser's  head  cut  off — 
and  that  neurotic  ape,  the  Crown  Prince,  drawn  and 
quartered.  That  old  man,  Edna,  my  father,  he  has  got 
a  head—" 

Edna  chuckled :  "  He  was  handing  your  Modernism 
back  pretty  hot  and  lively,  at  any  rate — stepmother — 
perfect  frankness — marriages  not  so  much — bowels — " 

"  Seriously,  dear — he's  a  very  good  Modernist,  on  all 
counts,"  insisted  Clotilde.  "  I  could  have  carried  off 
his  question  about  my  bowels  perfectly  if  you  hadn't 
screeched — it  was  sensible  and  Modern  and  altogether 
right  for  him  to  ask  it!  The  Swedes,  especially,  the 
Swedish  Modernists,  I  mean,  are  making  a  stand  for 
more  frankness  in  speech — but  excuse  me,  I'm  keeping 
you  from  your  edifying  rats,  dear!  Go  right  back  to 
them — as  for  myself,  I'm  going  to  dress,  and  set  about 
seeing  that  you  two  idiots  are  fed,  anyway,  until  you 
leave  this  house !  " 

"It's  kind  of  you,  dear — but  damn  the  rats!"  Edna 


268  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

called  to  Clotilde,  already  disappearing  into  the  bath 
room. 

"  What — losing  your  enthusiasm  so  soon?  "  called  back 
Clotilde. 

"Cat!"  said  Edna. 

"  No,  you  are — rats  are  your  meat,"  returned  Clotilde, 
and  laughed  as  she  closed  the  door. 

Edna  disgustedly  shuffled  her  pages  of  notes;  with 
most  sudden  converts,  she  was  in  danger  of  backsliding. 
She  doubted  whether  it  was  right  for  Artie  to  try  to  be 
a  soldier;  he  certainly  had  not  been  raised  to  be  a  soldier. 
She  promised  herself  that,  at  least,  he  should  finish  up 
every  unfinished  canvas  in  the  house,  and  he  had  dozens 
of  them,  before  he  turned  his  attention  to  the  matter  of 
slaughtering  Germans. 

Clotilde,  in  the  meantime,  was  sending  a  few  thoughts 
after  her  cablegram;  she,  also,  was  in  a  state  suggestive 
of  backsliding.  She  even  doubted  whether  she  had  been 
truly  Modern  in  sending  it:  Modernists  relied  on  an 
anomalous  mixture  of  pure  truth  and  plain  common 
sense  rather  than  on  the  emotional  forces  which,  calmer 
judgment  convinced  her,  had  inspired  that  message  to 
Clement  Townes.  At  least,  she  decided,  nothing  might 
come  of  it;  Clement  had  probably  contracted  other  emo 
tional  interests,  or  he  might  be  dead,  and  in  either  case 
her  message  would  be  quite  beside  the  mark.  At  the 
earliest,  she  couldn't  expect  a  reply  within  two  or  three 
days — she  could  put  the  matter  out  of  her  mind  for  that 
long,  anyway. 

Already  she  seemed  to  be  settling  into  a  restful  back 
water  of  life,  removed  from  the  somewhat  hectic  Modern 
istic  activities  of  the  past  three  days.  Her  mind  turned 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  269 

naturally  to  casual,  ordinary,  homely  interests.  She 
even  descended  to  the  banality  of  noticing  the  shape 
liness  of  her  hips,  of  remembering  her  Grand-aunt 
Tabitha's  comment,  delivered  to  a  much-ashamed, 
violently  blushing  sixteen-year-old  Clotilde :  ;<  You'll 
make  a  good  mother,  honey."  Clotilde  caught  herself 
blushing  faintly  at  the  memory — and  yet  there  was  cer 
tainly  nothing  in  that  to  bring  a  blush  to  the  face  of  a 
good  Modernist.  Rather  Modernistic,  in  some  ways,  had 
been  that  moralistic,  self-righteous,  plain-spoken  old 
grand-aunt,  dead  in  her  militant  spinsterhood  in  her 
sixtieth  year,  a  decade  ago. 

"  I'll  go  down  to  the  village  and  get  things  for  supper 
— and  drop  a  card  to  Henry,  telling  him  I  can't  come 
for  two  or  three  days,  anyway,"  she  said,  making  mental 
memoranda,  hurrying  into  the  skirt  and  shirt-waist  and 
sweater  and  substantial  walking  boots  that  seemed  suited 
to  the  more  every-day  level  of  her  thoughts  and  emo 
tions.  To  Helen,  ordered  home  by  telegraph  to  the  little 
Indiana  town  where  her  father  was  a  henpecked  lawyer, 
she  sent  the  tribute  of  a  passing  sigh  while  she  attended 
to  the  final  rite  of  putting  a  bit  of  powder  on  her  nose. 
She  had  hardly  known  Helen,  to  tell  the  truth;  if  they 
had  been  soldiers  in  the  same  war,  as  she  had  felt  so 
firmly  and  exaltedly  during  at  least  half  of  the  previous 
night,  they  had  served  in  different  regiments. 

Life  in  Woodbridge,  especially  life  at  the  Klings' 
bungalow,  had  settled  down  to  a  fairly  conventional  level, 
by  that  evening,  and  it  maintained  the  same  level  on  the 
next  day,  and  the  next,  until  the  days  stretched  into 
weeks,  and  the  weeks  into  a  month.  Artie  painted  furi 
ously:  that  was  the  chief  visible  remaining  reaction 


270  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

from  the  Modernistic  events  that  culminated  in  Helen 
Hope's  death.  He  had  never  painted  so  hard,  never 
with  such  an  interest,  in  his  years  of  devotion  to  canvas 
and  brush.  If  he  did  not  come  back  from  France,  he 
said,  he  wanted  to  leave  something  behind  him — not  only 
something  that  would  give  Edna  a  start  toward  earning 
her  own  living,  but  something  that  would  make  him  a 
memory  in  the  minds  of  art-lovers.  He  never  signed  a 
picture  without  a  thankful  feeling  that  some  discerning 
person  might  say,  noticing  the  name,  "  That's  a  Kling — 
Arthur  Kling;  he  was  killed  in  the  war,  you  know;  per 
haps  he  was  the  most  promising  of  the  younger  American 
artists." 

Edna  encouraged  him,  in  the  interims  of  reading 
about  rats,  attending  conventional  Woodbridge  teas,  as 
sisting  Clotilde  in  getting  the  conventional  Woodbridge 
breakfasts,  luncheons,  and  dinners.  When  Artie  sug 
gested  that  he  might  have  done  enough,  that  it  was  time 
he  enlisted,  Edna  found  other  work  demanding  his  ante- 
mortem  attention.  She  sent  off  a  completed  canvas, 
from  time  to  time,  to  the  Fifth  Avenue  art  dealer  who 
sometimes  admitted  a  Kling  to  his  sales  exhibition,  and 
the  results  were  satisfactory.  Artie  had  never  painted 
so  well.  Impending  death  nerved  his  arm,  fired  his 
imagination,  made  sure  his  stroke.  When  three  of  the 
pictures  sold  for  $500  each,  all  in  the  third  week  of 
Artie's  new  fever  of  production,  Edna  felt  that  he  might 
be  disturbed  by  knowing  that  they  had  so  much  money, 
and  refrained  from  telling  him.  She  began  to  dream 
dreams,  dreams  in  which  Artie  figured  as  a  classic,  with 
classic  prices  for  his  hundreds  of  unsold  canvases. 
There  was  more  reason  than  ever  for  postponing  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  271 

risking  of  such  talent  against  German  death-machinery 
and  trench  rats.  Edna  developed  the  conscience  and 
astuteness  of  a  circus  promoter. 

"It's  queer,"  she  told  Clotilde;  "but,  if  it  hadn't 
been  for  Helen's  death,  I'm  afraid  Artie  would  never 
have  amounted  to  much.  Now — three  canvases  sold 
last  week,  and  two  canvases  and  four  pochades  since 
Monday!  And  the  price  has  gone  up  to  unheard-of 
figures — and  that  Fifth  Avenue  Shylock  is  begging  for 
more!  I  really  think  Artie  deserves — protection." 

"Considering  him,  as  you  do,  merely  as  a  paying  in 
vestment,"  assented  Clotilde,  "  I  agree  with  you."  Edna 
smiled  wisely;  it  was  well  known  how  she  considered 
Artie. 

Clotilde,  as  the  October  colors  came,  flaming  out  on 
hillside  and  meadow,  began  to  dabble  a  little  herself, 
pochades  for  the  most  part,  with  just  sufficient  merit 
to  rouse  the  ire  of  Pop  Larkin,  ex-instructor  in  the  sum 
mer  art  school.  After  the  first  two  weeks,  she  had  given 
up  any  expectation  of  hearing  from  that  hysteria- 
inspired  cablegram  to  Clement  Townes,  and  visits  with 
Henry,  warding  off  Henry's  attempts  to  take  her  up  to 
board  at  the  Hooghtyling  farm,  helping  Edna  about  the 
house,  all  such  small  matters,  did  not  fill  up  her  time. 
At  times  she  thought  of  going  back  to  New  York,  but 
her  mother  was  visiting  in  California  until  the  end  of 
October,  and  she  delayed  her  return.  With  regularity 
and  placidity  that  was  a  growing  surprise  to  Edna, 
Clotilde  painted,  ate,  prepared  meals,  slept,  chatted, 
read  the  magazines,  in  general  went  through  the  rou 
tine  of  a  typical  well-regulated  Woodbridge  country- 
liver. 


272  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  You're  just  laying  up  for  a  new  sensation,  dear,  of 
course,"  Edna  told  her;  Edna's  belief  in  Clotilde  as  an 
inveterate  sensationalist  would  not  down.  "  The  longer 
you  act  like  a  sweet  little  girl  Sunday-school  scholar,  the 
worse  you'll  blow  up,  one  of  these  days.  I  suppose 
you've  about  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  exploiting  your 
ancestry  along  Modernistic  lines,  and  I'm  wondering  what 
you'll  take  up  next." 

"  I'm  having  the  time  of  my  life — just  resting  and 
trying  to  paint — I  certainly  shan't  '  blow  up,'  "  protested 
Clotilde.  "  I  like  to  look  at  the  sky,  and  the  trees,  and 
breathe  the  fresh  air,  and  eat  the  good  wholesome  grub 
we've  been  having,  and  sleep  ten  hours  a  night,  and  listen 
to  my  father — he's  instructing  me  in  Modernism,  even  if 
he  does  sit  around  and  take  my  mind  off  my  painting. 
I'm  having  a  really  splendid  vacation,  Edna — and,  un 
less,  of  course,  you're  getting  tired  of  having  me — " 

"  Never — and  I'll  need  you  the  worst  way  when  Artie 
goes."  That  "  when  "  had  become  a  joke. 

"  When,"  repeated  Clotilde. 

"  YeS,  my  dear — when."  Edna  grinned  impishly.  "  I 
must  have  caught  some  of  your  Modernism,  dear;  the  war 
doesn't  seem  so  hellishly  important  to  me  as  it  once  did. 
I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  keep  Artie  working  indefinitely 
— I  have  reached  the  point  of  getting  him  to  start  new 
canvases.  He's  out  walking,  now,  looking  for  a  land 
scape  motif.  Thank  God !  " 

"  I  don't  suppose  a  landscape  motif  is  likely  to  murder 
him,  at  any  rate,"  said  Clotilde;  if  there  was  a  hint  of 
superciliousness  in  the  reply,  it  escaped  Edna  completely, 
wrapped  up  as  she  was  in  a  cozy  appearance  of  placidity, 
from  which  war's  barbaric  alarms  had  been  excluded. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  273 

Her  comfortable  little  Pacifism,  for  some  reason,  irri 
tated  Clotilde. 

Edna's  way  of  meeting  danger,  granted  only  a  con 
viction  of  the  righteousness  of  meeting  it,  would  not 
have  been  her  way,  Clotilde  told  herself.  The  girl  rather 
despised  both  Artie  and  Edna,  at  the  bottom  of  her  heart, 
for  having  risen  to  heights  which  they  had  not  been  able 
to  maintain.  Their  noble  enthusiasm,  their  high  deter 
mination  to  do  and  dare  for  the  sake  of  an  ideal,  had 
descended  to  painting  more  pictures,  to  make  more  money. 
In  Edna's  case,  it  had  descended  to  a  downright  con 
tempt  for  the  war.  Edna  had  a  sprightly  little  air  of 
having  beaten  the  World  War,  of  having  foiled  its  de 
signs  on  her  beloved  Artie.  Truth  to  tell,  Clotilde  did 
not  admire  Edna  as  a  Pacifist  as  much  as  she  had  admired 
Edna  militant. 

In  her  own  mind,  Clotilde  was  in  a  complex  and  irri 
tated  state  of  rebellion,  not  only  against  the  war  but 
against  everything  that  had  a  relation  to  the  war,  even 
against  those  Woodbridgians  related  to  it  only  by  despis 
ing  it — in  which  class  Edna  now  frankly  belonged.  On 
the  average  of  once  a  day,  Clotilde  was  reminded  of  the 
war,  always  to  her  mental  disturbance,  sometimes  to  her 
flaming  indignation.  Woodbridge,  in  common  with  all 
the  rest  of  the  country,  was  making  the  war  more  its 
own  affair  every  day,  really  beginning  to  be  excited 
and  bitter  on  the  subject.  Even  in  her  seclusion,  Clotilde 
could  not  escape  the  new  war  spirit. 

It  assaulted  her  in  steadily  multiplying  service  flags 
along  the  village  streets  when  she  went  down  for  the 
mail,  in  the  talk  she  was  forced  to  overhear  in  the  post- 
office,  in  the  village  stores,  on  the  streets,  everywhere. 


274  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

There  was  no  more  social  life  to  speak  of,  because  the 
women  were  putting  in  their  spare  time  in  a  room  over 
the  barber  shop,  making  bandages  for  the  Red  Cross: 
if  Clotilde  didn't  particularly  miss  the  social  life,  she  was 
bored  by  having  to  listen  to  continuous  identical  ex 
planations  for  its  absence.  It  was  not  only  a  bore  but 
an  irritation  to  have  to  meet  the  solicitations  of  persons 
representing  the  Red  Cross,  or  desiring  contributions  in 
order  to  furnish  comfort  kits  for  "  our  home  boys,  soon 
to  be  at  the  front,"  for  a  hundred  and  one  war  charities. 
Most  of  the  solicitors  met  attempted  refusal  with  argu 
ment.  Clotilde  ended  by  contributing  whenever  asked 
as  the  easiest  way  out  of  unpleasantness. 

Even  Edna's  weekly  scrub-woman,  Mrs.  Michael 
Mooney,  insisted  on  talking  war — especially  when  she 
discovered  that  Clotilde  inclined  toward  Pacifism.  "  Ah, 
yes — my  nephew  is  going — I  gave  him  two  pullets'  eggs 
for  breakfast  when  he  was  over  to  see  me  the  other  day," 
said  Mrs.  Mooney.  "  I  told  'im  he'd  better  eat  'em  while 
he  could — they  was  probably  the  last  pullets'  eggs  he'd 
ever  eat." 

"  Oh,  I  hope  he'll  come  back  all  right,"  said  Clo 
tilde. 

Mrs.  Mooney  shook  her  head.  "  What  chance  is  they? 
I  say  it's  a  shame,  sendin'  the  poor  boys  over  to  get 
murdered — my  son,  he  got  run  over  by  a  automobile 
when  he  was  ten  years  old — and  I  always  couldn't  see 
but  what  God  had  made  a  mistake — but  now  I  see  He  was 
kind.  Archie — that  was  my  boy's  name — he  would  have 
been  draft  age,  now — and  I'm  glad  he's  dead!  Better 
get  killed  by  an  ordinary  automobile  than  all  shot  to 
pieces  over  there !  " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  275 

Clotilde  was  amazed,  protested  faintly :  "  But  he 
might  not — " 

"  Yes,  I  thank  God,  now,  he's  dead ! "  said  Mrs. 
Mooney.  "  All  these  years,  come  every  Labor  Day,  the 
day  when  he  was  killed,  I  couldn't  hardly  stand  it — but 
I  see,  now,  it  was  all  for  the  best ! " 

Mrs.  Mooney,  also,  was  possessed  of  inside  and  un 
shakable  information  to  the  effect  that  there  was  soon 
to  be  no  salt  in  the  country:  it  was  bad  enough  not  to 
be  able  to  get  enough  sugar  for  preserving,  but  what 
would  happen  to  poor  people  when  there  was  no  salt  for 
the  fall  butchering  ?  Clotilde  gradually  became  disgusted 
with  Mrs.  Mooney's  variety  of  Pacifism. 

Especially  irritating  was  an  interview  with  a  tall, 
angular,  white-haired,  intellectual-looking  spinster  who 
was  soliciting  for  some  war  charity  or  other.  "  But  it 
really  isn't  our  war,  you  know — so  why  should  I  con 
tribute?"  objected  Clotilde. 

The  spinster  replied :  "  Well,  it's  my  war,  all  right 
— and,  if  you'll  look  around  you,  I  think  you'll  find  it's 
Woodbridge's  war,  also.  Perhaps  you  didn't  know  that 
over  seventy  young  men  from  this  neighborhood  have 
already  volunteered  and  been  called?  I  don't  know  pre 
cisely  to  whom  you  refer  when  you  say  it  isn't  '  our ' 
war." 

"  At  least  it  isn't  my  war,"  Clotilde  countered. 

"  Then  you  don't  believe  in  the  democratic  principle  of 
majority  rule  in  all  matters  that  vitally  affect  the  national 
unit?" 

"  That's  the  point.  The  majority  of  the  American 
people  don't  want  this  war ! " 

"  You  are  either  very  stupid,  my  dear,  or  very  badly 


276  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

informed ! "  The  spinster  lady's  gray  hair  gave  her 
something  of  an  unfair  advantage.  "  If  you  will  look 
over  our  national  history,  you  may  discover,  as  I  have, 
that  the  American  nation  has  never  shown  such  a  solid 
front  in  favor  of  any  war — not  the  War  for  Indepen 
dence,  the  Rebellion,  nor  the  Spanish-American  War. 
If  you  consider  Woodbridge  at  all  typical  of  the  nation 
at  large,  I  suggest  you  make  a  canvass,  as  I  have,  of  the 
war-feelings  of  the  people.  If  sentiment  was  opposed  six 
months  ago,  it  is  overwhelmingly  the  other  way  now. 
I  happen  to  know — American  history  is  my  hobby,  and 
I've  kept  track  of  public  opinion  hereabouts.  I  confess 
I  started  feeling  much  as  you  do.  I  expected  riots  when 
the  draft  went  into  effect — that  was  the  test  of  popular 
opinion — you  probably  know  something  of  the  results  of 
that  test  as  applied  to  the  Rebellion?  I  would  like  to 
know,  as  a  matter  of  personal  interest,  on  what  definite 
authority  you  base  your  assumption  that  the  American 
people  don't  want  this  war  ?  " 

The  woman  was  very  insulting,  too  insulting  to  argue 
with,  especially  in  the  absence  of  definite  authority. 
Clotilde  gave  her  a  dollar  as  the  politest  way  of  dismiss 
ing  her,  if  not  of  making  her  more  humble.  The  woman 
was  not  very  appreciative.  "  I  think  I  know  whose  war 
this  is,"  she  announced,  grimly  adding  the  dollar  to  a 
considerable  roll  of  bills.  "  I'm  going  to  make  a  little 
talk  on  that  subject  down  at  the  Lutheran  Church,  next 
Saturday  evening.  I  hope  that  you  will  come.  I  be 
lieve  I  have  some  information  that  will  certainly  surprise 
you,  and  may  do  you  good." 

Clotilde  might  have  accepted  this  invitation,  partly 
because  of  its  very  asperity,  but  Edna  wouldn't  hear  of 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  277 

it.  No  whisper  about  war  must  come  to  Artie.  Even 
if  Clotilde  went  alone,  Artie  might  learn  where  she  had 
gone,  argued  Edna,  and  so  be  reminded  of  matters  that 
it  was  best  for  him  to  forget.  Artie,  such  was  his  new 
devotion  to  his  art,  hadn't  even  noticed  that  Edna 
had  discontinued  both  newspapers.  "  As  good  Paci 
fists,  dear,"  said  Edna,  "  let  us  adopt  the  Chinese 
motto  to  see  no  evil,  hear  no  evil,  speak  no  evil — con 
sidering  the  evil  in  the  motto  to  be  a  euphemism  for 
war." 

Clotilde's  state  of  mental  complexity  and  irritation 
was  not  improved  by  the  Chinese  motto;  it  seemed,  for 
one  thing,  to  argue  for  suppression  of  the  Truth,  since 
evil  may,  at  times,  manifestly  be  true,  and  not  improved 
by  the  adoption  of  an  ostrich  attitude.  "  I  don't  know 
that  I  admire  your  Chinese  motto,  Edna,"  she  said. 
"  I'm  going  to  look  into  this  war,  sooner  or  later,  just 
to  be  sure  I'm  right.  I  suppose  I  should  have  looked 
into  it  before,  but  I'm  having  such  a  good  time  just  doing 
nothing — and,  of  course,  I  agree  with  you  in  wanting  to 
do  all  I  can  to  keep  Artie  out  of  it,  dear." 

Nevertheless,  on  that  afternoon  when  Edna  made  her 
latest  joke  on  the  prospect  of  Artie's  enlisting,  Clotilde 
had  not  echoed  her  friend's  fervent  "  Thank  God !  "  She 
felt  a  little  lazy  disdain  of  Artie,  kept  in  cotton  wool  for 
bodily  safety,  and  of  Edna  for  keeping  him  there.  In 
some  lazy,  hazy,  indefinable  way,  out  of  the  spasmodic 
complexities  and  irritations  stirred  up  by  the  war, 
Clotilde's  war-views  had  suffered  modification.  Pacifism 
for  safety's  sake,  at  least,  did  not  appeal  to  her.  If  Edna 
had  taken  up  her  "  I  don't  suppose  a  landscape  motif  is 
likely  to  murder  him,  at  any  rate,"  she  would  have  been 


278  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

ready  for  quite  a  little  tilt  with  Edna,  a  tilt  that  might 
have  ended  in  the  expression  of  some  war  views  she 
didn't  know  she  had.  In  the  absence  of  any  retort  from 
Edna,  she  resigned  herself  to  wondering  lazily  whether 
the  war  was  worth  while,  casting  a  side-glance  at  Edna's 
cynically  complacent  profile  from  time  to  time.  Not  the 
Truth,  but  simple  self-interest,  was  at  the  bottom  of 
Edna's  rabid  Pacifism.  It  was  a  situation  to  irritate  any 
true  Pacifist,  almost  to  make  a  true  Pacifist  begin  to  ask 
harsh  questions  of  her  Pacifism. 

They  had  drawn  their  chairs  out  onto  the  bungalow's 
wide  southwestward  porch,  and  they  basked  in  the  sun 
shine.  It  was  the  twenty-second  of  October,  Indian  sum 
mer  weather,  a  day  when  the  old  Manitou  of  the  Catskills 
sat  on  the  summit  of  Teyce  Ten  Eyck  and  puffed  pale 
blue  webs  of  smoke  into  the  air. 

Henry  Hooghtyling  sauntered  up  the  path,  some  fifteen 
drowsy  minutes  later,  bearing,  as  usual,  gifts.  Edna 
went  into  the  house,  leaving  Clotilde  with  the  old  farmer. 
They  talked,  disjointedly,  quietly,  with  a  wealth  of 
mutual  satisfaction,  for  perhaps  half  an  hour.  Certain 
details,  such  as  Henry's  determination  to  have  his  teeth 
removed  right  after  butcherin',  when  it  wouldn't  make 
so  much  difference  if  he  was  laid  out  for  a  week  or  two, 
such  as  their  understanding  that  Clotilde  was  not  to  visit 
the  Hooghtylings  until,  with  Arthur  Kling's  departure, 
things  should  settle  down  more  at  the  Klings',  having 
been  settled  to  their  mutual  satisfaction,  they  enjoyed 
their  visits  a  great  deal. 

"  Well,  they's  nawthin'  like  comin'  right  to  the  point," 
announced  Henry  frankly,  after  their  half-hour's  desul 
tory  talk;  "  and  the  point  is,  Clotilde,  that  your  step- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  279 

mother,  I'm  havin'  difficulty  controllin'  her,  and  that's  a 
fact.  I  thought  I'd  ought  to  tell  you." 

Clotilde  asked:  "  What's  the  trouble?"  She  gained 
much  information  and  insight  into  human  nature  from 
Henry's  frequent  quotation  of  Ethel,  even  though  other 
interests  had  kept  her  from  any  large  acquaintance  with 
Ethel  direct. 

"  It's  this  way :  your  step-ma — well,  your  step-ma,  girl, 
— she  says  it  ain't  right,  nor  Christian,  but  what  you 
ought  to  come  to  your  own  home,  and  live  there  till  you're 
married,  right  and  proper — she  says.  She  says  if  I  don't 
put  her  argyment  up  to  you,  she'll  come  down  herself 
and  do  it.  So — I'm  a-puttin'  it  up  to  you,  not  wishin' 
you  and  her  to  get  into  an  argyment  that  might  not  do 
neither  of  you  no  good.  As  I  figger  it,  you'm  a  peart, 
fine-blooded  young  heifer,  and  she'm  a  good,  strong- 
minded  old  cow — and  they's  bound  a'most  to  be  a  little 
hookin'  when  you  get  that  combination.  The  better 
the  animiles,  the  more  likely  they  is  to  be  disagree 
ments." 

'  That's  complimentary  to  both  of  us,  I'm  sure,"  said 
Clotilde,  without  irony ;  Henry  had  meant  it  as  a  compli 
ment  to  them  both,  and,  rightly  considered,  it  was.  "  But 
my  stepmother  must  take  it  into  account  that  my  real 
home  is  with  my  real  mother — when  I  come  up  to  stay 
with  you  a  few  days — if  you  still  want  me — it  will  be 
only  visiting." 

"  Sure — that's  what  I've  told  her,  but  she'm  strong- 
minded,  Ethel  is,"  Henry  explained;  "nor  I  wouldn't 
give  a  peck  o'  spiled  potatoes  for  any  critter  that  didn't 
have  a  mind  of  its  own,  neither.  I've  argyed  with  her, 
by  the  hour,  I  have.  Marriage,  I've  told  her,  don't 


a8o  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

'mount  to  nawthin' — it's  the  livin'  together,  the  gettin' 
used  to  each  other,  that  makes  a  man  and  wife.  Like 
wise  a  mother  and  daughter.  Your  real  mother — Lord, 
how  I've  tried  to  show  her — she  lives  down  in  New  York, 
but  nawthin'  will  do  Ethel  but  she's  a  good  deal  more 
right  to  run  you  than  anybody  else — except  me.  That's 
the  gist  of  it — Ethel  wants  to  run  you — she  says  it  ain't 
the  same  havin'  a  married  daughter  to  boss  round  and 
havin'  one  right  in  the  house,  ain't. 

"  '  Yes — you  want  somebody  to  boss  round,'  says  I. 

"  '  And  if  I  do  ? '  says  she.  '  A  little  trainin'  wouldn't 
hurt  her.  She's  a  fine  girl,  but  she's  been  brought  up 
with  too  free  a  rein,'  says  Ethel.  *  Not  that  you  could 
a-expected  different  under  the  circumstances.  I'll  bet 
she  don't  even  go  to  church,'  says  Ethel." 

"Do  you  go  to  church — regularly,  Henry?"  asked 
Clotilde. 

He  shook  his  head.  "  No,  I  let  Ethel  'tend  to  that  for 
both  of  us — not  that  I  got  anything  'gainst  the  church, 
nor  'gainst  our  Dominie,  neither.  I  went  for  a  while 
after  he  said  that  about  Ella  Collins,  at  her  funeral  you 
know,  how  she  was  a  good  woman,  and  had  about  as 
good  a  chance  to  get  to  Heaven  as  most,  spite  o'  havin' 
three  children  'thout  bein'  married.  I  thought  that  was 
downright  good  common  sense,  and  I  went  to  hear  him 
o'  Sundays  for  a  while — but  he  didn't  do  so  well  a'ter- 
ward,  or  so  it  seemed  to  me.  Too  much  Jonah-an'-the- 
w'ale  stuff — I  couldn't  swaller  it.  Myself,  I  b'lieve  a 
person  had  ought  to  be  let  to  decide  whether  preachin's 
interestin'  to  him  or  not.  I  got  nothin'  'gainst  the 
Dominie  for  tryin'  to  put  over  all  that  stuff;  all  I  say  is, 
as  for  me,  I  simply  ain't  interested.  I'd  ruther  white- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  281 

wash  my  henhouse,  or  somethin'  like  that,  of  a  Sun 
day  mornin',  or  just  set  quiet  an'  smoke  and  think 
'bout  things.  It  do  beat  all  how  our  hens  been  layin' 
lately." 

Clotilde,  refreshed  and  quieted  as  usual  by  his  mono 
logues,  suggested :  "  Maybe  I  ought  to  come  up  and  talk 
it  all  over  with  Ethel?  Of  course  I've  been  intending 
to — but  things  have  been  so  unsettled — " 

"  I  dunno — I  dunno,"  Henry  interrupted,  considerably 
to  her  surprise.  "  I've  thought,  sometimes,  'tmight  be 
a  good  idea,  but  other  times  I  don't  see  any  good  could 
come  out  of  it.  You  and  Ethel  don't  look  at  things  the 
same  way,  like  you  and  I  do — 'lowin'  for  me  not  havin' 
no  eddication — " 

"  I  don't  know  anybody  who  looks  at  things  more 
nearly  as  I  do  than  you  do  yourself,"  put  in  Clotilde 
warmly,  recognizing  the  strangeness  of  the  confession  as 
coming  from  a  Modernist  of  the  Modernists. 

"  Well — and  I'm  glad  of  it.  But  Ethel — she's  read  a 
lot,  and  you  can  learn  a  lot  o'  things  that  ain't  so  if  you 
read  enough.  When  I  read  a  thing,  I  say  to  myself,  if 
it  sounds  pretty  good — '  Well,  how  does  it  jibe  up  with 
what  I've  seen  and  hearn  tell  of  ?  '  I  say  to  myself.  Just 
one  thing — I  helped  move  away  the  old  cemetery;  they 
had  to  move  to  get  room  for  the  reservoir,  y'know,  and, 
a'ter  that  I  didn't  take  much  stock  into  the  Tostles' 
Creed,  where  it  talks  'bout  resurrection  of  the  body,  you 
know.  Now  Ethel,  she'd  put  her  ringers  in  her  ears 
if  I  begun  to  tell  'bout  what  I  seen  in  diggin'  up  some 
o'  those  corpses,  been  there  fifty,  maybe  a  hundred  years, 
right  down  to  those  that  hadn't  been  buried  but  a  few 
months.  We  opened  up  most  o'  the  caskets,  y'know,  to 


282  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

identify  the  corpses  inside.  Ethel  didn't  even  want  me 
to  help  do  it,  but  they  was  four  dollars  a  day  into  it,  and 
I  learned  a  good  deal.  Neither  do  I  see  why  a  person 
shouldn't  talk  'bout  it,  providin'  he  don't  go  jokin'  'bout 
it,  like  some  of  the  men  did.  If  a  thing's  good  enough 
to  happen,  I  says  to  myself,  it's  good  enough  to  talk 
about,  and  God,  if  they  is  one,  didn't  give  us  eyes  to  see 
things  and  mouths  to  talk  about  'em — no,  nor  He  didn't 
let  them  happen,  neither,  if  He  was  afraid  to  have  us 
talkin'  'bout  'em.  'Course  I  may  be  wrong — " 

"  I  think  you're  precisely  right,"  said  Clotilde. 

"  Well,  even  'lowin'  we're  both  wrong,"  said  Henry, 
"  and  they's  a  chance  we  be,  too — even  'lowin'  that,  what 
I'm  gettin'  at  is  you  and  Ethel  don't  look  at  things  the 
same  way,  not  even  enough  the  same  way  so's  you  could 
talk  five  minutes  'thout  disagreein';  nor  you  ain't  old,  as 
I  be,  and  so  used  to  Ethel's  ways  and  able  kinda  to  get 
around  her,  like  a  man  that's  got  any  sense  will  get 
aroun'  a  peart  old  cow  'thout  startin'  ructions.  Now,  I 
delivered  Ethel's  message,  like  I  promised  her  I'd  do, 
tellin'  you  to  come  right  up  to  the  house;  and,  lookin' 
at  it  from  my  way,  I'd  say  'bout  the  best  thing  for  you  to 
do  would  be  to  send  back  word  that  you  was  kep'  here 
and  that  your  plans  was  very  indefinite.  If  I  was  you, 
I'd  give  Ethel  'bout  a  month  more  o'  coolin'  off  afore 
you  come  visitin'.  'Course  I'm  only  suggestin' — " 

"  I  agree  with  you — please  tell  her  just  that,"  said 
Clotilde. 

Henry  nodded,  highly  pleased  by  this  sign  of  filial 
trust.  "  Just  one  thing  more,"  he  said;  "  ef  you  was  to 
see  her  walkin'  up  that  path  to  the  house,  'bout  half  an 
hour  from  now — I  ain't  sayin'  you  will,  but  they's  possi- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  283 

bilities,  seein's  she  said  she'd  come  down  herself  if  I 
didn't  bring  you  back  in  'bout  an  hour,  and  I  been  here 
half  an  hour,  I  guess — time  goes  awful  fast  when  I  get 
talkin'  to  you,  and  that's  a  fact —  Well,  if  I  was  you,  I'd 
have  Mrs.  Kling  go  to  the  door.  Not  but  what  I'm  fond 
o'  Ethel,  not  but  what  she  ain't  a  fine  woman,  you  under 
stand — but  she's  considerable  excited  by  a  book  she's 
been  readin',  '  Loved  and  Conquered/  where  a  fine  young 
girl  comes  near  goin'  wrong  because  she  ain't  been 
brought  up  with  a  firm  hand,  only  her  husband  actin' 
like  a  brute  toward  her  saves  her,  Ethel  says.  I  burned 
the  fool  book  just  before  comin'  down — maybe  I  was 
•wrong — it  didn't  seem  to  quiet  Ethel  none,  not  so's  you'd 
notice  it. 

"  Well,  I  guess  I'll  just  mosey  back,  now,"  said  Henry, 
rising,  patting  down  the  loose  front  of  his  best  suit, 
always  worn  when  he  called  upon  his  daughter.  "  They's 
some  fresh  eggs  in  the  basket,  and  a  pie — Ethel's  got 
awful  fond  of  you,  hearin'  me  tell  about  you,  not  but 
what  that  don't  make  her  more  keen  to  boss  you  round. 
Yes,  I  guess  I  was  right  advisin'  you  to  just  keep  out  of 
sight  when  you  see  her  comin'.  'Course  I'll  prob'ly 
meet  her,  and  maybe  I  can  get  her  to  go  'long  back  with 
me,  but  I  ain't  bankin'  on  it — no,  I  ain't  bankin'  on  it. 
It's  like  Ethel  was  gettin'  lately  to  the  place  where  she 
was  'bout  half-way  forgettin'  herself  most  o'  the  time. 
Well,  so  long,  Clotilde.  I  can  git  the  basket  a'right 
when  I  happen  down  tomorry  afternoon — if  you  won't 
mind  me  happenin'  down — ?  " 

He  was  holding  out  his  hand;  Clotilde  rose  and  shook 
hands  with  him,  holding  his  scrawrny,  wrinkled  member 
while  she  assured  him  that  she'd  be  glad  to  have  him 


284  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

happen  down  just  whenever  he  felt  like  it.  "  It  does  me 
a  lot  of  good  to  confab  with  you  like  this !  "  she  finished ; 
and,  quite  abruptly,  bent  forward  and  kissed  him  on  the 
cheek. 

He  accepted  it  with  the  stolidity  of  a  wooden  Indian, 
that  first  kiss  from  the  daughter  who,  particularly  by 
giving  him  an  outlet  for  conversation,  had  won  a  firm 
hold  on  his  old  affections. 

"  I'll  sure  have  them  old  snags  out,  come  the  end  o' 
butcherin',"  he  grumbled,  to  himself,  rather  than  to  her, 
and  slouched  hurriedly  away. 

Clotilde,  smiling,  with  a  purring  feeling  at  her  heart, 
went  into  the  living-room  to  acquaint  Edna  with  the  im 
pending  visitation  of  Mrs.  Ethel  Hooghtyling,  bound  on 
capturing  and  domesticating  a  straying  stepdaughter. 
Edna  was  not  in  the  living-room.  Clotilde  glanced  into 
the  bedroom,  almost  ready  to  disturb  a  nap,  such  was 
the  exhilarating  nature  of  her  news,  coming  pleasantly 
into  the  somewhat  monotonous  level  of  their  joint 
menage.  Edna  wasn't  in  the  bedroom,  either.  "  Oh, 
Rats — where  are  you,  Rats  ?  "  called  Clotilde,  proceeding 
toward  the  kitchen.  Mrs.  Kling's  researches,  now  lapsed 
into  such  a  state  that  they  were  fit  matter  for  a  house 
hold  sobriquet,  had  suggested  the  name  as  a  ripost  for 
Edna's  frequent  gibe  of  "  Uneasy  Virgin "  directed  at 
Clotilde's  Modernism. 

"  Yes,  dear,"  answered  Edna's  voice,  subdued  by  a 
closed  door,  from  the  kitchen. 

Clotilde  burst  into  the  kitchen.  "  Say,  we  are  about 
to  be  confronted — "  she  was  beginning,  and  stopped, 
somewhat  confused  by  Edna's  air.  Edna,  sitting  in  the 
blue  kitchen  chair,  with  her  hands  folded  in  what  went 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  285 

for  the  lap  of  her  silken  Chinese  trousers,  looked  con 
ventionally  herself,  perhaps  a  little  more  bored  than  usual, 
and  yet — 

"  What's  wrong — anything  happened,  peaches-and- 
cream  ?  "  Clotilde  asked. 

"  Oh,  nothing  much — "  Edna  sighed  faintly,  sniffed 
faintly,  looked  boredly  out  of  the  nearest  window.  There 
might  have  been  a  desert,  or  a  polar  waste,  outside  the 
window,  instead  of  the  lemon-yellow  maple  sapling  that 
burned  there.  "  Nothing — except  that  Artie's  gone — 
to  be  a  soldier  bold." 

"  Edna !     You  don't  mean—  ?  " 

"  Yes — just  that.  Gone  off  to  be  a  soldier  bold. 
Artie — a  soldier  bold !  Isn't  it  enough  to  make  an  angel 
weep,  Clo'?" 

"  But — Edna !  You  said — he'd  gone  out  to — to  look 
for  a  landscape  motif — and — " 

"  Sit  down.  Don't  get  excited,"  advised  Edna  curtly. 
She  jerked  her  thumb  toward  the  kitchen  table  beside 
her.  "  Artie's  good-by,"  she  explained.  Clotilde  saw  a 
letter,  a  many-paged,  closely-written  letter,  sprawled 
loosely  as  if  it  had  been  tossed  there  in  carelessness  or 
disgust.  "  That  missive — he  left  it  in  the  bread-box — 
I  found  it  when  I  went  to  get  him  a  few  sandwiches — 
you  see,  he's  been  gone — hunting  for  that  motif — since 
early  this  morning,  and  I  thought  he'd  probably  be 
hungry  when  he  got  back.  It  was  thoughtful  of  Artie 
to  put  it  in  the  bread-box — he  thought,  of  course,  I 
wouldn't  find  it  until  I  went  to  get  dinner  this  evening 
— knowing  that  we  eat  rusks  for  lunch.  So  he  wrapped 
his  farewell  letter  in  the  waxed  paper,  next  to  a  loaf  of 
bread.  In  that  way  I'd  be  spared  about  ten  hours  of 


286  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

worry — he'd  be  gone  ten  hours  before  I  found  out  where 
he  was  headed  for,  you  see." 

Clotilde  objected :  "  But — it  doesn't  seem  like  Artie 
— some  way — " 

"  You  say  that  because  you  don't  really  know  Artie," 
said  Edna,  crossing  one  silk-trousered  knee  over  the 
other.  "  It's  precisely  like  him — if  I  hadn't  been  such  a 
fool  as  to  forget  what  he  was  like,  I  should  have  expected 
it.  The  idea  that  I'd  thought  he'd  forgot  his  purpose — 
that  I  was  making  him  forget  it! — It's  a  splendid  letter 
— you  see,  it's  made  me  reconciled  to  my  loss,  left  me 
calm  and  composed,  just  as  he  intended,"  she  finished, 
sniffing  thoughtfully. 

Clotilde  ventured :  "  Well,  that  is  one  good  thing — " 

"  It  is,"  agreed  Edna.  "  As  he  wrote,  if  I  found  out, 
suddenly,  this  morning  when  he  left,  that  he'd  already  en 
listed — well,  hysterics — bad  for  both  of  us,  of  course — 

"  Yes,  he'd  enlisted  two  weeks  ago — didn't  tell  me  he 
was  going  to  try  because  he  thought  they  might  refuse 
him  on  physical  grounds,  or  because  of  his  eyes — he's 
frightfully  near-sighted,  you  know.  But  it  seems  they 
took  him,  near-sighted  eyes,  flabby  muscles,  and  all. 
They  gave  him  two  weeks  to  settle  his  affairs,  and  he 
preferred  to  use  them  in  painting,  and  in  allowing  me 
to  be  happy  in  supposing  I  had  him  side-tracked,  rather 
than  in  a  continual  emotional  jag — such  as  we'd  have 
enjoyed  if  he'd  come  back  and  sprung  that  news  on  me. 
Clo',  he  did  well — he  did  it  up  in  style!  I'm  proud  of 
him — and  I'm  going  back  to  my  rats,  a  better  woman 
because  of  the  husband  I've  got— for,  by  God,  he's  some 
husband,  Clo' !  I  wish  I  could  let  you  read  his  letter — 
maybe  I  will  let  you  read  parts  of  it. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  287 

"  I  see  you  still  look  a  little  horrified,  you  dear  Uneasy 
Virgin,"  Edna  continued;  "probably  you're  thinking  of 
the  good-by  we  missed.  Well,  we  had  a  good  one — don't 
let  that  worry  you.  He  waked  me  up  to  talk  about  his 
work,  and  how  happy  we'd  been  together,  and  to  make 
love  to  me,  at  six  o'clock  this  morning;  and,  when  he  left 
me  right  after  breakfast — well,  Clo',  it  was  a  fine  sort 
of  a  good-by  for  any  woman  to  have  to  remember — I 
ought  to  have  known  then,  but  I  thought  he  was  merely 
inspired,  emotional,  on  account  of  his  painting,  you 
know."  She  sniffed  sharply,  and  blinked  away  a  few 
tears.  "  Oh,  I  daresay  I  shall  get  weepy  over  him  from 
time  to  time,"  she  admitted,  "  but — whatever  comes — I'll 
be  so  proud  of  him  that  I'll  keep  up!  Yes,  and  proud 
of  myself,  too,  because  of  something  in  me  I  didn't  know 
I  had,  something  that  makes  me  take  this  hardest  knock 
of  my  life  in  the  way  I'm  taking  it — something  rather 
terrific — rather  Biblical — that  casteth  out  fear,  Clo' ! 
I'm  glad  he's  gone — decently,  without  any  mawkish 
display — if  I  knew  he  were  going  to  be  shot  tomorrow 
at  sunrise,  I'd  kiss  him,  and  pat  him  on  the  back,  and  say 
— Go  on,  man — God  is  with  you !  "  Eloquence  sat 
strangely  on  the  little  woman ;  she  had  always  been  tart, 
clever,  deserving  of  her  reputation  as  Woodbridge's  clev 
erest  gossip,  but  this  new  upliftedness,  bigness,  of  face 
and  language  left  Clotilde  gasping.  "  Of  course  you 
can't  understand  a  bit  of  it — you  can't  begin  to  appreciate 
how  proud  I  am  of  him — you  practical,  sensible,  unemo 
tional  Pacifist,  you  can  never  be  as  proud  of  any  human 
being  as  I  am  of  my  poor,  foolish,  distracted,  divinely 
brave  and  noble  husband!  I  pity  you,  Clo' — I'm  so 
deeply  and  tremendously  happy,  that  I  quite  pity  you; 


288  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

and  I  pity  you  the  more  because  I  can  see  that  you're 
so  benighted  as  to  have  the  infernal  nerve  to  pity  me! 
Forgive  me  for  boiling  over  like  this,  dear — but  you 
simply  can't  appreciate — no  woman  can  who  hasn't  seen 
her  man  go  off  to  risk  his  life  and  hers  for  right  and 
justice — liberty,  the  dignity  of  the  human  soul — no 
woman  who  hasn't  been  through  that,  and  been  made  to 
understand  the  necessity  and  grandeur  of  it  as  Artie's 
letter  has  made  me  understand — you  see,  Clo',  I've 
experienced  something  like  a  religious  conversion,  and  it 
is  just  a  trifle  irritating  to  see  you  looking  round-eyed, 
innocent,  totally  uncomprehending  pity  at  me!  For  all 
your  reading  and  erudition,  Clo',  you're  about  as  virginal 
and  generally  ignorant  of  brains  as  you  are  of  body — my 
poor  dear !  " 

Clotilde's  suspicion  of  a  particularly  cold  and  cruel 
form  of  hysteria,  that  had  kept  her  biting  her  lips,  ready 
to  go  to  Edna's  assistance  if  Edna  suddenly  collapsed, 
evaporated,  steamed  up  like  evaporating  snow,  into  a 
misty  mystery.  And  yet  the  girl  was  nearer  com 
prehending  the  woman  than  the  woman  would  have 
believed;  that  night  alone  with  Helen  Hope's  body  had 
given  her  some  trace  of  exaltation  a  little  resembling 
Edna's,  had  left  memory-channels  in  her  consciousness 
ready  to  receive  a  few  tingling  currents  of  Edna's 
emotional  state.  She  had  some  nerve-knowledge,  deeper 
than  intellectual  acceptance,  of  idealisms  before  which 
death  might  be  no  more  than  a  cowed  and  humble 
servant. 

Edna  suddenly  chuckled.  "  I  suppose  you  think  I'm 
as  crazy  as  a  loon,  dear,"  she  announced,  misreading  the 
mental  state  of  Clotilde  as  fairly  as  Clotilde,  only  a 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  289 

moment  before,  had  misread  her  own.     "  Come  on — 
let's  go  into  the  living-room.     It's  more  comfortable." 

Her  gorgeous  Chinese  coat,  taken  off  when  she  set 
about  preparing  some  lunch  for  Arthur,  adorned  the  back 
of  a  chair ;  she  put  it  on,  gathered  up  Arthur's  letter  from 
the  kitchen  table,  and  led  the  way  into  the  living-room. 
"I  suppose  you  had  a  good  confab  with  your  paw?" 
she  mentioned,  turning  to  grin  over  her  shoulder  at  Clo- 
tilde;  she  would  have  it  that  Clotilde's  paw  was  in  danger 
of  becoming  a  millstone  around  Clotilde's  neck,  Modern 
istic  as  that  neck  might  claim  to  be. 

Clotilde  was  somewhat  affronted  by  Edna's  lightness; 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  she,  Clotilde  of  much  ac 
quaintance  with  truth,  was  being  put  in  the  class  of  inex 
perienced  younglings,  to  whom  it  is  proper  to  remark : 
4t  Never  mind,  dearie,  you'll  understand  all  these  matters 
when  you  get  older."  In  the  very  nonchalance  with 
which  Edna  set  about  rolling  a  cigarette  there  was  the 
sign  of  a  new  and  extensive  barrier  between  them. 

Edna  rolled  the  cigarette  awkwardly,  spilling  tobacco 
over  her  silk  coat.  She  and  Artie  had  taken  to  rolling 
their  own  cigarettes  as  a  measure  of  war  economy. 
Clotilde,  in  a  slightly  hurt,  slightly  indignant  silence, 
watched  her. 

She  was  not  so  worn  or  nervous-looking  as  she  had 
been;  the  month  of  comparative  peace  and  quiet  that  the 
three  of  them  had  enjoyed  had  rested  her  nerves,  ironed 
some  of  the  wrinkles  out  of  her  small,  keen  face.  Never 
theless,  her  shoulders  showed  a  slight  stoop,  her  arms  an 
almost  shapeless  thinness,  and  her  lined  neck  and  loosely- 
piled  grayish  hair  suggested  her  years  of  planning  and 
scraping  as  a  half-successful  artist's  wife.  She  was  an 


290  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

unpromising  subject  for  a  grande  amour,  such  as,  from 
time  to  time,  Clotilde  suspected  her  and  Artie  of  enjoy 
ing.  "  How  is  everything,"  Edna  interrupted  herself  to 
lick  her  cigarette  paper,  "  up  to  the  farm — including 
step-mama  ?  " 

Clotilde  was  reminded  of  step-mama's  threatened  raid, 
but  she  was  in  no  proper  mood  to  introduce  the  subject. 
Thanks  to  the  barrier  erected  by  Edna,  she  began  to  get 
a  return  of  her  ache  of  lonesomeness,  to  feel,  in  some 
way,  out  of  things.  Edna  didn't  need  her;  her  mother, 
visiting  in  California,  didn't  need  her;  her  father,  while 
edifying,  didn't  fill  the  intimate  vacancies  in  her  soul. 
It  was  almost  four  weeks,  a  lunar  month,  since  that  lone 
someness  of  hers  had  forced  her  to  unmaidenly  reach- 
ings-out  in  the  direction  of  a  man — who  hadn't  responded 
even  to  the  extent  of  a  message.  It  was  beginning  to 
come  upon  her  again,  a  rising  tide  of  inward  melancholy 
and  longing. 

"  Oh,  everything's  all  right  up  at  the  farm,"  she 
answered,  and  sat  looking  out  of  the  window,  the  big 
sliding  studio-lights  that  took  up  half  of  the  south  side 
of  the  room.  Twilight  was  coming  on,  a  softly  blue  and 
misty  twilight,  over  the  blended  colors  of  tree,  bush, 
and  meadow  between  the  Klings'  bungalow  and  the 
road. 

"Edna,  you're  blurring,"  she  announced  suddenly; 
"  you're  full  of  Artie,  of  nothing  but  Artie — why 
shouldn't  we  talk  about  him?  I'm  rather  full  of  him, 
too.  He  has  a  pretty  good  head  on  his  shoulders — I 
don't  think  anything  could  stampede  Artie;  and,  if  he's 
found  it  necessary  to  get  into  that  European  brawl, — 
well,  I  may  not  be  so  incapable  of  understanding  as  you 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  291 

may  think  me,  you  know.  Why  did  he  feel  that  he,  of 
all  men,  had  to  go — if  he  told  you?  " 

Edna,  smiling  a  little  superiorly,  puffed  her  cigarette. 

"Well,  we  act  from  our  emotions,  don't  we?"  she 
suggested.  "  I  suppose  it  was  emotional  with  Artie — 
just  as  it  is  with  me.  Emotionally,  you're  opposed  to 
war;  and  emotionally,  just  now,  I'm  crazy  about  it.  We 
can't  argue  the  emotions.  So  I  thought  we  might  just 
as  well  talk  about  something  else." 

Clotilde  looked  out  of  the  window.  She  almost  wished 
that  Mrs.  Ethel  Hooghtyling  would  heave  in  sight  along 
the  meadow-path;  subconsciously,  and  a  bit  consciously, 
toe,  perhaps,  she  was  suffering  the  fate  of  a  fine  healthy 
young  egotist  whose  affairs  were  not  of  prime  im 
portance,  who  was  even  denied  intellectual  participation 
in  the  highly  important  matters  of  a  friend.  She  had 
played  second  fiddle  most  of  her  life,  and,  common  and 
instructing  fate  of  the  younger  generation  though  this 
proceeding  may  be,  she  had  developed  sufficient  person 
ality  of  her  own  to  dislike  it. 

"  Oh,  we  can  talk  about  emotions — there's  nothing  we 
can't  intellectualize  about,  is  there?  "  she  protested;  pass 
ingly  she  thought  of  a  packed  suitcase  and  a  ticket  to 
New  York.  Edna  was  a  little  too  puffed-up,  too  much 
wrapped  up  in  her  own  importance,  because  her  husband 
had  turned  soldier.  It  was  a  fairly  common  experience, 
after  all. 

"  Yes,  but  it  wouldn't  get  us  anywhere."  Edna  blew 
smoke  through  her  nose  and  rubbed  one  blue-Chinese 
slippered  foot  over  the  other  in  vast  content.  "  I  could 
no  more  explain  to  you  why  Artie's  gone  to  get  himself 
killed — as  he  probably  will  be,  poor  flabby-muscled,  short- 


292  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

sighted  dear  that  he  is — than  I  could — than  I  could  ex 
plain  certain  marital  experiences  to  you,  you  know.  You 
simply  haven't  the  background — and  that  isn't  a  bad 
comparison,  either.  Pacifists  and  virgins  have  a  good 
deal  in  common.  There's  only  hope  for  them  when  you 
begin  to  find  pacifism  and  virginity  uninteresting." 

"  Edna — you're  downright  brutal !  " 

"  There — I'm  glad  to  hear  you  say  it.  Do  you  know, 
Clo',  you've  been  staring  at  me  ever  since  I  told  you  the 
news  about  Artie  as  if  I'd  been  a  poor,  nutty,  pitiable, 
little  widow.  It  gets  my  goat!  I  thought  I'd  stir  you 
up  till  you  got  to  considering  me  a  sane  and  competent 
human  being — not  half  as  much  to  be  pitied  as  you  are. 
It's  a  good  deal  better  to  have  a  husband  to  send  into 
this  damned  war  than  not  to  want  to  send  one — believe 
me  that  have  tried  both  methods !  " 

Clotilde  shrugged  her  shoulders.  Edna  was  rather 
unbearable. 

"  Edna,"  said  Clotilde,  with  tinglings  up  and  down  her 
spine  and  more  glow  in  her  eyes  than  the  bit  of  fire  was 
responsible  for,  "  frankly — you  know — I  mean,  reverting 
to  my  hope — to  your  own  words — perhaps  I'm  not  going 
to  be  as  much  help  to  you,  now  that  Artie's  gone,  as  I'd 
expected." 

Edna  said,  puffing  smoke  with  some  vim :  "  Why,  Clo' 
— what's  got  into  you,  child?"  She  changed  her  mind 
and  her  mood :  "  Well,  frankly,  Clo', — and  I  believe  in 
frankness  at  times,  even  if  I'm  not  a  Modernist — to  tell 
the  plain  truth,  I'm  afraid  you're  not!  I've  got  such  a 
hate  on  all  Pacifists,  you  know, — I  couldn't  help  it,  really, 
could  I,  considering  that  Artie's  gone  ? — So  coming  down 
to  the  plain  truth,  Clo',  I'm  afraid  we  couldn't  be  good 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  293 

cronies  because,  on  so  many  vital  points,  we  simply — 
couldn't  understand  each  other."  She  chuckled  suddenly : 
"So  the  war  comes  between  lifelong  friends!  Please, 
now,  dear,  don't  think  I'm  a  perfect  brute — possibly  I'm 
weak  to  feel  as  I  do — " 

Clotilde  said,  calmly,  in  spite  of  the  bitterness  that 
was  threatening  to  choke  her :  "  Why,  dearest  girl,  I'm 
only  glad  to  know  your — reactions — " 

"  Now,  dear  child,  you're  not  hurt?  " 

"  Why,  how  could  you  think  it  ?  I  only  wanted  to 
know — to  make  sure — before  suggesting — the  evening 
train—" 

"  Please,  dear — wait  till  morning!  That  evening  train 
is  so  slow — it  stops  at  nearly  every  gatepost  between  here 
and  Hoboken." 

"  No,  really,  dear-r-if  you're  sure  you  won't  mind  stay 
ing  alone — " 

"  But,  dearest,  that  train — it's  really  awful! " 

They  were  at  daggers  drawn,  now;  Clotilde  sat  clench 
ing  her  fists  in  her  lap  while  Edna  burbled  on,  icicly 
insisting  on  the  unfortunateness  of  the  evening  train, 
conventionally  pleading  with  her  guest  to  remain  until 
morning.  By  virtue  of  her  greater  self-control  and 
matronly  experience  at  similar  encounters,  Edna  was 
having  all  the  best  of  it.  Clotilde,  bleeding  at  every  vein, 
had  no  chance  to  get  in  a  thrust.  Edna  fell  upon  her 
with  a  hundred  suggestions  for  her  comfort,  babying  her 
outrageously,  repaying  her  a  thousandfold  for  Clotilde's 
half-defensive  thrust  of  "  dearest  girl." 

Edna  interrupted  her  steady  velvet-gloved  hammering 
to  look  out  of  the  window,  over  Clotilde's  bowed  and 
defenseless  head,  to  look  with  bright  surprise,  and  an- 


294  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

nounce :  "  It  seems  we're  going  to  have  visitors,  dear : 
now,  I'm  sure  you'll  stay — at  least  for  tonight! " 

Clotilde  remembered  Ethel,  looked  out  of  the  window 
and  saw  Ethel  advancing,  so  voluminous  in  her  fuzzy 
black  coat  that  her  method  of  procedure  might  have 
been  described  as  deployed,  across  the  meadow. 

"  It's  only  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,"  she  said  faintly.  She 
was  crushed.  Even  Ethel  presented  no  further  terrors. 
She  would  face  her  stepmother,  bent  on  conquest  and 
bossing,  as  a  relief  from  the  solicitations  of  Edna. 

"  Why,  I  thought  I  saw  at  least  two  persons,"  com 
mented  Edna,  chatty,  almost  purring,  rejoicing  in  her 
victory  and  cattish  to  a  degree.  "  But  it  may  have  been 
only  the  size  of  your  step-mamma  that  deceived  me — that, 
and  my  conviction,  from  all  you've  said  about  her,  that 
she  must  be  a  whole  host  in  herself.  Do  you  suppose 
she's  coming  to  kidnap  you,  dear?" 

Clotilde  was  slightly  diverted;  Edna  had  a  way,  a 
lightness,  about  her. 

"  I  shouldn't  wonder,"  admitted  Clotilde. 

Edna  offered  assistance:  "Shall  we  meet  her  on  the 
porch — barricade  her  out  of  the  house — and  oppose  lan 
guage  to  language  ?  Or  would  you  rather  I  did  it,  dear  ? 
I  feel  fine  and  conversational — I  could  guarantee  not  to 
let  her  get  out  above  two  complete  sentences  before  I 
flooded  her — sent  her  gasping  and  baffled  away !  " 

"  Yes — I  really  believe  I'd  back  you  to  do  it !  " 

"  I  can !  Just  sit  there  and  listen — she  may  have 
volume,  dear,  but  I  have  precision — and  a  good  carrying 
voice!"  Edna  was  whole-heartedly  enthusiastic,  but 
Clotilde,  for  some  vaguely  resentful  reason  that  had  to 
do  with  showing  Edna  her  place,  objected :  "  I  think  I'd 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  295 

prefer  to  meet  her  myself,  dear,  if  you  have  no  objec 
tions.  I  have  treated  her  rather  shabbily — due  to  my 
preoccupations  here,  rather  than  to  any  wish  to  avoid 
her." 

"  Thank  you — I  had  it  coming — very  good,  dear ! " 
Edna  congratulated  her;  and  added,  with  frank  admira 
tion  :  "  You're  pretty  good,  Go' — we'll  have  a  good  laugh 
over  our  recent  little  racket  after  this  cruel  war  is  over, 
won't  we,  pet  ?  You  have  to  take  into  consideration  that 
I'm  not  a  bit  rational  now — I'm  super-rational — and  it 
makes  me  hard  to  get  along  with — just  as  all  the  old 
saints  were,  you  know — imagine  living  with  Joan  of  Arc 
— but  I  suppose  I'll  get  less  Joan  of  Arc-ish — " 

"  Here's  hoping! "     Clotilde  rose,  put  out  her  hand. 

"  You're  a  good  sport,  dear !  I  suppose  I've  been  a 
cat.  At  the  same  time  there  are — emotional  differences 
neither  of  us  can  get  around !  "  They  shook  hands,  Edna 
warmly,  Clotilde  with  a  little  revengeful  bitterness  that 
her  recent  mauling  more  than  justified,  but  some  humor 
ous  appreciation,  too ;  she  said :  "  Yes,  dear,  I  must  go 
before  we  get  our  fingers  into  each  other's  hair,  mustn't 
I  ? "  At  the  instant  footsteps,  numerous  and  solid 
enough  to  belong  to  at  least  three  persons,  crossed  the 
porch,  approached  the  front  door.  "  Come  with  me — 
let's  meet  this  last  danger  together,  anyway,"  requested 
Clotilde,  slipping  a  hand  into  her  friend's  arm.  "  Sounds 
like  a  small  army,  doesn't  it?  "  whispered  Edna,  pressing 
the  hand  against  her  side;  and  so,  presenting  a  united 
front,  they  opened  the  door  to  Ethel. 

Ethel's  broad,  massive,  vigorous  countenance,  more 
rubicund  because  of  the  green  bonnet  topping  it  off,  was 
wreathed  in  such  smiles  as  cherubs,  even,  wear  only  on 


296  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

extra-special  occasions.  Her  blue  eyes  twinkled  gaily, 
almost  mischievously. 

"  How  do  you  do?  I'm  awful  glad  to  see  you're  in !  " 
she  chirruped,  with  no  trace  of  baritone,  in  fact  in  the 
daintiest  of  sopranos,  with  almost  a  lilt  on  the  "  awful 
glad."  She  extended  a  yellow-gloved  hand  toward  Clo- 
tilde,  thought  better  of  it,  and  extended  it  to  Edna  before 
Clotilde  could  reciprocate.  "  I  suppose  it's  correct  to 
shake  hands  with  the  lady  o'  the  house,  first,"  she  said. 
Then  she  shook  hands  with  Clotilde.  "  I  been  awful 
disappointed  not  to  see  you  up  our  way,"  she  chided 
Clotilde  passingly,  and  broke  up  Clotilde's  attempted 
apology  by  the  general  announcement : 

"Of  course  it's  ladies  first,  but  now  it's  his  turn." 

With  this  cryptic  preparation,  which  so  pleased  her 
that  her  eyes  almost  danced  out  onto  her  crumpled  pink 
cheeks,  she  removed  her  wide,  high,  black-coated  person, 
removed  it  slowly  as  if  it  had  been  a  screen,  to  reveal 
a  slight  and  smiling  young  man,  whose  presence  she 
had  pretty  well  camouflaged. 

"  Why — I  thought  I  saw  two  persons — and,  just  now, 
on  the  porch — "  began  Edna,  obviously  at  sea  as  to 
whether  she  ought  to  know  the  young  man  or  not.  She 
glanced  at  Clotilde  for  enlightenment;  but  Clotilde  was 
remarking  "  Merciful  Heavens!  "  in  a  perfectly  flat  and 
feeble  voice,  staring  the  while  at  the  young  man  in  a  per 
fectly  flat  and  feeble  way.  He  was  a  remarkably  con 
ventional  and  ordinary-looking  young  man  to  cause  such 
flat  feebleness  in  anyone;  you  might  have  collected  several 
thousand  young  men  not  essentially  different  from  him 
on  any  Manhattan  side-street. 

"  It's  a  surprise,  isn't  it  ?     I  found  him  down  by  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  297 

stile,"  mentioned  Ethel,  quite  on  her  toes  with  the  social 
success  of  her  discovery,  "  and  brung  him  right  up  with 
me.  He's  from  New  York,  just  got  in  on  the  afternoon 
train.  He  wouldn't  believe  me,  Miss,  that  I  was  your 
stepmother,  but  I  guess  I  convinced  him,"  she  confided 
to  Clotilde,  and  delicately  suppressed  a  broad  titter  be 
hind  a  broader  yellow  glove. 

Clotilde  was  barricaded  off,  by  Ethel,  from  any  contact 
with  the  New  Yorker;  Edna,  hopeless  of  an  introduction, 
invited  him  in :  "  Come  in,  anyway — I  suppose  you're  a 
friend  of  Clotilde's — even  if  poor  Go'  seems  to  be — " 

"  And  I  do  hope,  ladies,  you  won't  think  this  is  an 
intrusion,"  declaimed  Ethel,  seizing  the  center  of  the 
room,  of  the  stage,  of  general  interest,  of  everything  in 
sight,  with  her  prerogatives  of  bearing  and  voice.  She 
threw  back  the  front  of  the  big  black  coat,  with  a  military 
gesture,  revealing  a  green  silk  gown,  bright  green  silk, 
with  an  escarped  parapet  of  point  lace  near  the  rounded 
and  voluminous  top.  The  red  jabot-tassel,  Henry's  latest 
tribute  to  her  adornment,  gleamed  like  a  danger-signal 
against  the  green  behind  it,  tossed  about  as  her  vigorous 
speech  and  vigorous  local  activity,  even  when  she  stood 
as  stiff  as  a  general  on  parade,  moved  it.  "  I  hesitated 
for  a  long  time."  She  began  to  draw  off  her  yellow 
gloves,  glancing  from  one  member  of  her  audience  to 
another,  holding  them  all  by  her  glittering  and  masterful 
eye,  her  glittering  and  colorful  bearing.  "  I  says  to 
myself,  of  course  it  was  right  for  a  person  like  myself 
livin'  in  a  place  to  make  the  first  call  on  a  stranger,  even 
if  the  stranger—  She  glanced  with  proprietary  indul 
gence  at  Clotilde;  " — happened  to  be  my  own  step 
daughter.  So,  when  she  was  busy,  too  busy  elsewheres 


298  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

to  come  to  see  me — "  Here  she  politely  challenged  the 
staring  and  so  far  speechless  Edna  with  the  politest  and 
iciest  of  glares.  "  I  thought  I  might  just  drop  in — to 
pass  the  time  of  day,  if  nothing  else.  I'd  have  done  my 
duty — "  Her  roving  survey  of  the  field  fixed  upon  the 
young  man  from  New  York,  challenged  his  denial. 
"  And,  if  no  notice  was  took  to  it — "  Here  she  faced 
about  with  a  quick  half-turn  to  catch  Clotilde's  eye,  to 
keep  it  from  meeting  the  New  Yorker's,  as  it  seemed 
bent  on  doing  if  it  was  granted  half  a  chance.  "  Well, 
no  notice  was  took  of  it — that's  all.  I  would  have 
done  my  duty — in  callin'  first — even  on  my  own  step 
daughter." 

She  paused  for  the  fraction  of  a  second,  sweeping  the 
three  points  of  the  compass  designated  by  the  three 
members  of  her  audience,  waiting  for  a  reply,  for  denial 
or  equivocation.  None  was  forthcoming.  The  New 
Yorker  turned  a  mildly  speculative  blue  eye  at  Edna,  who 
stood  nearest  him,  and  ventured :  "  Taking  it  for  granted 
that  you  are  Mrs.  Kling,  I — " 

Ethel  immediately  resumed  command :  "  Well,  I  sup 
pose  we  all  might  as  well  set  down.  When  a  person  gets 
as  old  as  I  am,  settin'  appeals  to  'em  more'n  it  does  to 
you  three  young  things."  She  seated  herself,  bolt  up 
right,  in  a  central  wicker  chair,  as  if  it  had  been  a  throne, 
crossed  one  patent-leather-tipped  shoe  over  the  other, 
waved  her  yellow  gloves  in  her  right  hand  in  a  scepter- 
like  gesture.  "  Just  set  down — if  I  take  the  biggest  chair 
it's  no  more'n  my  right,  seein's  as  I'd  make  about  two  of 
any  of  you."  They  sat  down,  Clotilde  at  the  right  of  the 
presence,  Edna  and  the  New  Yorker  at  its  left.  The 
New  Yorker  glanced  at  Edna  and  thoughtfully  smoothed 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  299 

his  neatly  parted,  short-cropped  brown  hair.  He  was  as 
spruce  and  dapper  and  fashionably  suited  as  a  bank  clerk, 
and  he  showed  a  bank-clerkish  humbleness  before  mani 
fest  superiority.  Edna  met  his  eye,  glanced  at  Clotilde; 
there  was  a  helplessness  about  Edna.  Clotilde  was 
shaken  by  a  sudden,  unsuppressible  chuckle :  "  You  seem 
so  silent,  Edna,  dear,"  she  managed  to  shoot  across  be 
fore  Ethel  closed  up  the  breach  in  her  conversational 
offensive,  and  forged  ahead :  "  It's  nawthin'  but  the  truth 
— I  been  expectin'  to  make  this  call  for — honest,  I'd 
hesitate  to  tell  you  how  long,"  she  declared.  There  was 
an  emphatic  quality  about  her  commonest  assertions  that 
lifted  them  into  the  realm  of  the  rare,  attention-com 
pelling,  important.  "  I  actually  would !  It  must  have 
been  near  a  month — it  must,  for  a  fact!  " 

"  Oh,  really — I'm  sure  we're  sorry  you  didn't  make  up 
your  mind  to  come — "  Edna  began,  starting  a  rearguard 
action. 

But  Ethel  promptly  overwhelmed  her :  "  Yes,  a  body 
'ud  think  I  might — but  a  person  hesitates  about  some 
things.  I  talked  it  over,  time  and  time  again,  with 
Henry.  Henry  is  my  husband,"  she  explained  mo 
mentously,  for  the  benefit  of  the  two  parties  on  the  left 
who  might  not  have  been  expected  to  know  it.  "  But 
Henry — well,  he  believes  in  goin'  slow — not  but  what 
he's  not  made  o'  nerve  and  nothin'  else,  once  he's  got  his 
mind  made  up! 

"  Why,"  said  Ethel,  tossing  her  head,  compressing  her 
lips  as  if  at  the  beginning  of  an  ex  cathedra  announce 
ment,  "  there  was  his  teeth!  You  know,  he  really  ain't 
stro-ong — in  fact  he  ain't  been  good  for  nawthin'  for 
near  onto  fifteen  years,  ever  since  he  broke  down  from 


300  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

overwork  in  the  quarries,  that  and  lookin'  after  me  and 
the  children  when  we  was  all  so  frail  and  ailin' — workin' 
all  day  and  all  night,  and  walkin'  six  miles  more'r  less 
each  way  to  the  quarries,  in  below  zero  weather  half  the 
time,  not  gettin'  'nough  to  eat,  me  being  so  sickly  I 
couldn't  drag  myself  from  my  bed  to  look  after  him 
as  he  deserved.  And  they's  never  a  man  deserved  lookin' 
a'ter  more'n  Henry,  if  I  do  say  it  myself,  and  he  my 
husband!  Well!  All  that  might  a-broke  his  poor  old 
body,  but  did  it  break  his  nerve?  No — he  kep'  his  nerve, 
Hen  did!  Sometimes  I  think  they  ain't  much  more'n 
nerves  to  him — that,  and  a  few  bones  'thout  enough  skin 
over  'em  to  keep  him  from  creakin'.  They  do  creak, 
sometimes,  maybe  you  wouldn't  b'lieve  it — they  creak 
often  o'  nights.  I've  heard  'em.  It's  a  fact! " 

"  I'm  sure — "  It  was  Edna's  second  attempt,  stopped 
more  abruptly  than  the  first.  "  Well! "  rumbled  Ethel, 
turning  quick  blue  eyes,  sprightly  attention  in  Edna's 
direction.  She  had  the  quickness  combined  with  the 
solid  stolidity  of  a  pachyderm,  and  she  was  endowed  with 
a  plethora  of  oral  powers  that  no  pachyderm  ever  thought 
of  possessing.  "  I  was  startin'  to  tell  you  about  his  teeth. 
Nat'rally,  his  teeth  went,  'long  with  most  of  his  other 
physical  powers — they  kep'  a-goin',  kep'  a-goin'  till  he 
didn't  have  anything  left  a  person  could  rightly  call  teeth. 
I  kep'  at  him  to  have  'em  out,  and  get  a  false  set,  but 
they  was  so  much  work  to  be  did  he  said  he  couldn't  spare 
the  time  bein'  in  bed  for  maybe  a  month,  and  he  was 
right — they  was  more'n  I  could  handle — not  but  what  I 
told  him  I  thought  I'd  make  out  to  do  his  chores  as 
well's  mine  and  nurse  him  too.  I  got  to  thinkin'  maybe 
he  lacked  the  nerve  to  face  it — actually  I  did!  Not 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  301 

really,  you  know,  I  know  Hen  too  well  for  that — but 
anyway,  one  day,  'bout  three  weeks  ago,  I  riled  him  so 
about  his  stummick  bein'  bad — 'count  of  his  old  teeth, 
you  know — what  does  he  do  but  pack  off  to  Kingston, 
right  out  of  a  clear  sky,  and  have  'em  out — the  whole  lot 
of  'em !  I  tell  you,  I  was  scared — 

"  Maybe  you  don't  know  what  it  means,"  declaimed 
Ethel,  glancing  from  one  to  another  of  her  listeners  for 
signs  of  proper  awe  and  not  finding  sufficient  to  suit 
her,  "  to  have  out  eight  great  big  back  teeth,  nothin'  of 
'em  left  for  a  dentist  to  get  hold  onto — cuttin',  pryin'  em 
out  like  old  stumps!  Why,  Uncle  Aleck,  a  good  deal 
pearter  man  just  to  look  at  him  than  Hen  ever  thought  o' 
bein'  for  fifteen  years — though,  afore  he  broke  down,  he 
was  as  peart  as  any  of  'em — well,  it  laid  out  Uncle  Aleck 
for  a  month,  just  havin'  out  four  old  snags  did.  But 
Hen — he  made  nawthin'  of  it — wouldn't  even  talk  about 
it — wouldn't  even  let  me  put  lemon  and  salt  on  his  poor 
old  gooms,  all  cut  to  pieces — lemon  and  salt  stings  some, 
but  it  helps  the  healin'.  It  was  his  nerve  brought  him 
through.  He  wouldn't  even  let  me  look  at  the  place — 
just  says,  '  Never  mind  about  the  teeth,  Ethel,'  and  went 
on  about  his  business.  Oh,  he's  got  nerve,  Hen  has ! " 
She  faced  the  young  New  Yorker.  "  I'll  bet  you  never 
went  through  nawthin'  like  that,  young  man !  " 

"  No,"  confessed  the  New  Yorker ;  "  no — I  admit  I 
quail  before  a  dentist — " 

"  And  I  don't  blame  you;  so  does  most  folks — but  Hen, 
he's  nothin'  but  a  bunch  o'  nerve !  " 

"  But,  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  are  you  sure — "  Clotilde 
ventured. 

"  I'd  ruther  you'd  call  me  '  Ethel/  "  interrupted  Mrs. 


302  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Hooghtyling,  with  intense  if  gentle  firmness.  "  Hen  and 
me,  we  talked  it  all  over.  I  thought  maybe  I'd  ask  you  to 
call  me  '  mother,'  or  just  '  ma,'  like  the  other  girls  did, 
but  Hen  says  it  had  better  be  '  Ethel,'  since  you've  got 
to  callin'  him  '  Henry '  instead  of  '  paw/  and  maybe  he's 
right,  seein's  he  mostly  is.  That  was  one  thing  I  thought 
I'd  ask  you,  Mrs.  Kling — I  thought  I'd  kinda  put  it  up 
to  you,  as  a  married  woman,  whether  it  had  ought  to  be 
'  Ethel '  or,  maybe,  '  ma.'  " 

"  I'm  glad  you  put  it  up  to  me !  "  declared  Edna,  seizing 
an  opportunity  as  pleasant  as  it  was  unexpected.  "  As  a 
married  woman,  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  I  look  at  it,  perhaps, 
from  a  saner  and  wiser  standpoint  than  Clotilde  might. 
I  take  into  consideration  the  simple  and  accepted  truth 
that  you  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Clotilde's  stepmother. 
I  think  that  it  should  be  '  ma.'  I'm  sure  it  should  be 
'  ma.'  It  is  customary,  it  would  constitute  a  recognition 
of  truth  that,  in  the  Modernistic  state  of  society,  would 
be  especially  valuable.  I'm  sure  that  Clotilde  would  agree 
with  me  that  nothing  but  '  ma '  would — would  measure 
up  to  Modernistic  standards." 

Ethel  was  gratified,  exhilarated,  almost  overwhelmed 
with  pleased  surprise.  "  Well,  now,  that's  exactly  how 
I  argyed  about  it;  but  maybe  Clotilde  here — maybe 
she — "  She  was  almost  chirruping  again,  holding  back 
most  of  her  breath,  trembling  on  the  edge  of  this  momen 
tous  decision.  All  eyes  in  the  room  fixed  on  Clotilde; 
the  situation  was  tense,  quivering,  vital. 

"I  agree,  perfectly,"  said  Clotilde;  she,  also,  was 
pardonably  short  of  breath,  but  her  words  came  full  and 
strong.  "  I  shall  be  glad  to  call  you  '  ma.' ' 

"  .Well — "     It  was  not  the  familiar  explosion,  indica- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  303 

live  of  the  resumption  of  a  conversational  barrage.  Ethel 
was  weak  with  awe,  with  wonder,  with  justified  senti 
ment.  "  Well— I — "  Her  voice  quivered,  she  blinked 
rapidly  straight  before  her;  and,  as  when  a  strong  man 
is  brought  to  the  verge  of  unaccustomed  tears,  her 
emotion  filled  the  atmosphere  almost  to  suffocation.  The 
youthful  New  Yorker  rolled  his  eyes  toward  the  ceiling. 
Edna,  also,  looked  at  the  ceiling.  They  might  have  been 
invoking  the  blessings  of  Heaven  on  that  sacred  moment, 
or  praying  for  insight  to  understand  it  in  its  human 
fullness.  Clotilde  was  the  only  comparatively  calm 
person  in  the  room;  there  was  a  suggestion  of  a  faint 
glare  in  her  eyes,  of  mixed  triumph  and  outrage,  as  she 
glanced  across  at  Edna,  and  her  look  did  not  soften 
when  it  encountered  the  rapt  upward  gaze  of  the  dapper 
young  man  from  New  York. 

"  It  does  me  a  lot  o'  good  to  hear  you  say  it,  Clotilde," 
ventured  Ethel,  getting  started  again.  "  Henry  and  me 
talked  it  all  over — "  She  proceeded  to  explain  at  length 
the  devious  methods  by  which  she  and  Hen  had  reached 
their  devious  and  complicated  conclusions.  Edna  seized 
an  opportunity  to  say  to  the  young  man:  "  Even  if  Fate, 
a  particularly  vigorous  and  conversational  Fate,  seems 
to  have  denied  me  an  introduction,  I  think  I  know  who 
you  are.  I  hope  you  brought  along  one  of  those  delight 
ful  ukeleles  that  you  make  out  of  cigar-boxes?  You  see, 
Clotilde's  told  me  about  their  fame — and  we're  always 
short  of  music,  except  the  canned  phonograph  things,  up 
in  this  neck  of  the  woods." 

"  Ukeleles  ?  Really,  I  don't — "  the  young  man  was 
beginning,  rather  blank  as  to  face  and  voice,  when  Ethel, 
with  a  sure  sense  for  rebellion  against  her  dominion, 


304  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

sailed  down  upon  them :  "  I  was  just  saying  to  Clotilde, 
you  know,  that,  although  her  real  mother  may  be  living, 
I  want  to  feel  I've  got  a  place  in  makin'  her  comfortable, 
in  doin'  for  her  all  those  things  a  mother  can  do.  She 
tells  me  her  mother  is  in  California,  and  I  hope  I  may  be 
excused  if  I  felt  like  sayin'  that  a  young  girl  like 
her  might  better  have  some  mother  around  her, 
if  girls  is  anything  like  what  they  was  when  I  was 
young — " 

Ethel  paused,  turned,  acknowledged  an  interruption. 
Other  footsteps  were  approaching  the  door,  alien  foot 
steps — and  no  power  in  the  room  had  interrupted  Mrs. 
Hooghtyling. 

Edna  rose,  went  to  the  door,  opened  it,  all  in  an 
unusual  silence.  "Oh,  hello — so  glad  to  see  you!"  she 
called;  "unusually  glad!  Come  right  in — we're  having 
a  nice  quiet  party !  " 

The  Major  appeared,  eminently  a  Major  in  spite  of 
his  civilian  clothes,  full  of  an  air  of  gruff,  domineering, 
succinct  importance,  a  fine  compelling  figure  of  a  military 
man  emeritus.  "  Clotilde,"  called  Edna,  escorting  the 
Major's  wife,  to  make  way  for  whom  Edna  had  pushed 
the  Major  into  the  room.  "  I  think  you  haven't  met 
Major  and  Mrs.  Parkinson?  " 

Clotilde  rose,  crossed  in  front  of  Ethel,  and  shook 
hands  with  Mrs.  Parkinson;  she  was  a  white-haired  lady, 
delicately,  quietly,  old-fashionedly  aristocratic  in  every 
word  and  movement.  The  Major,  having  marched  into 
the  middle  of  the  room,  halted,  dominated  the  scene,  took 
account  of  the  topography  with  a  sweeping  eye,  and 
stared  stonily  at  the  fire.  He  seemed  utterly  unim 
pressed,  not  only  by  the  dapper  young  gentleman  from 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  305 

New  York,  now  risen  and  standing  politely  behind  his 
chair,  but  by  Ethel  as  well.  Ethel  nervously  creased  her 
yellow  gloves;  she  was  dominated  by  the  Major. 

"  And  this  is  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,"  proceeded  Edna, 
bringing  Mrs.  Parkinson  forward :  "  Major  and  Mrs. 
Parkinson."  Ethel  was  already  on  her  feet,  ignoring 
Mrs.  Parkinson,  full  of  interest  in  the  stately  old  Major. 
"  Oh,  I've  heard  of  you ! "  she  told  him,  extending  her 
hand.  "  You  was  a  real  soldier — " 

"  Umph — glad  to  meet  you,"  interjected  the  Major, 
turning  her  hand  and  herself  over  to  his  wife,  backing 
away.  He  glanced  at  the  waiting  young  gentleman, 
glanced  away,  more  unimpressed  than  on  his  first 
inspection. 

"  Hope  we're  not  interruptin'  party ! "  he  grumped 
hoarsely  to  Edna;  he  was  very  shy,  and  he  lost  most  of 
his  voice  when  surrounded  by  strangers.  "  Saw  Artie 
this  mornin' — thought  we'd  just  run  up." 

Edna's  face  turned  calm  and  serious :  "  Then — he  told 
you — he  was  going?  " 

"  Yes.     You  know  a'ready?  " 

The  Major  put  a  hand  on  her  arm,  blinked  down  at 
her,  scowled  frightfully  into  her  tranquil,  upturned, 
rather  drawn  little  face.  On  the  other  side  of  the  room, 
Clotilde  was  introducing  Mrs.  Parkinson  to  the  dapper 
young  man,  but  the  Major  and  Edna  were  in  a  secluded 
space  by  themselves. 

"  Knew  you'd  take  it — right,"  the  Major  told  her,  in 
a  hoarse  whisper.  "  It's  hard — but — damn  fine!  " 

Were  there  tears  in  his  old  eyes?  Edna's  eyes  were 
full  of  them. 

"  Go  now."     The  Major  cleared  his  throat.     "  Run  up 


306  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

later.      Have  a  talk.      Don't  let  the  wife  get  you  to 
weepin' — nothin'  to  weep  'bout — what  ?  " 

"  No,  no !  "  declared  Edna  stoutly.  The  Major,  with 
a  final  squeeze  of  her  shoulder,  made  a  strategic  move 
ment  toward  the  door.  He  hated  tea  parties — especially 
tea  parties  predominantly  hen.  Clotilde  got  in  his  way. 
"  But,  Major  Parkinson,  before  you  go — " 

"  Gotta  run — just  brought  the  wife  up — back  this 
evenin',"  snapped  the  Major,  in  three  explosions,  sidling 
around  her  with  considerable  agility. 

But  Clotilde  held  him  with :  "  I  want  you  to  meet 
another  soldier,  Major, — a  member  of  the  Lafayett' 
Escadrille — in  France  you  know — " 

The  Major  was  not  only  held,  but  driven  back  in  dis 
order.  "Hey?  What?  Huh ?"  he  gasped,  reforming 
his  scattered  wits,  clenching  his  golf  cap  in  both  hands, 
sending  stabbing  glances  around  the  room  in  search  of 
anything  that  looked  like  a  soldier.  One  of  the  stabs 
struck  Ethel  full  between  the  eyes,  and  she  met  it  with 
soldierly  determination;  nevertheless,  the  Major's  eyes 
left  her,  centered  on  the  trim  young  New  Yorker. 

The  trim  young  New  Yorker  was  balancing  his  weight 
delicately  on  his  hands  and  the  back  of  the  chair,  lifting 
his  toes  a  little  from  the  floor.  He  grinned  appreciatively 
at  Ethel,  grinned  with  more  reserve  at  the  Major,  and 
leisurely  moved  the  chair  out  of  the  way  to  be  ready 
in  case  the  Major  showed  signs  of  wanting  to  meet  him, 
even  of  wanting  to  shake  hands.  His  mouth,  especially 
now  that  he  was  amused,  slanted  at  a  slight  angle  across 
his  thin  but  tanned  and  vigorous-looking  face.  He  had 
a  thin,  large,  straight  nose  and  very  reserved  dark  blue 
eyes,  reserved  and  a  trifle  bored,  as  the  eyes  of  young 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  307 

men  accustomed  to  mingle  in  the  strenuosities  of  the 
most  strenuous  city  in  the  world  are  likely  to  be,  the 
eyes  of  a  young  man  who  might  have  been  suspected  of 
having  lost  the  ability  to  be  much  surprised  by  anything. 

"  Huh ! "  repeated  the  Major,  so  explosively,  glaring 
so  vimfully,  that  the  young  man  raised  his  eyebrows  at 
him.  "  A  mere  Corporal,  Major,"  explained  the  young 
man  sweetly,  and  straightened  up,  hands  at  his  outside 
trouser-seams,  so  genially  at  attention  that  it  was  ap 
parent  he  didn't  care  a  damn  whether  the  Major  noticed 
him  or  not. 

"  Yes :  just  a — an  airplane-soldier,  Major,"  Clotilde 
put  in,  much  distressed,  made  quite  fluttersome  by  the 
suggestion  of  a  riot.  She  hurried  on,  oilily :  "  Of  course, 
if  you  are  in  a  hurry — but  I  just  thought — since  Mr. 
Townes,  also,  was  in  the  military  profession — " 

"Lafayette  Squadron?"  growled  the  Major  at  the 
erect  and  genially  unconcerned  Mr.  Townes.  Mr. 
Townes  saluted.  "  Yes,  Major." 

The  salute,  the  dignifiedly  deferential  voice,  galvanic- 
shocked  the  old  man  into  action.  His  heels  clicked  to 
gether,  his  forward-craned  neck  snapped  back,  his  hands 
went  down,  palms  flat,  against  his  petrified  legs ;  his  cap, 
released,  rolled  onto  the  floor.  Before  it  had  stopped 
rolling,  the  Major's  right  hand  rose  like  a  piece  of 
machinery  to  a  perfect  salute,  rose  to  the  gray  temple 
of  his  stony-calm  face  that  was  anomalously  electric  with 
emotion. 

"  Eh — uh — beg  pardon,  Corporal,"  grunted  the  Major 
in  a  husky  voice,  grinning  foolishly,  unbending,  becoming 
human  almost  as  suddenly  as  he  had  petrified.  He 
stepped  forward,  hump-shouldered,  blinking  with  con- 


308  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

trition  and  friendliness,  to  extend  his  hand.  The  young 
man  from  New  York,  and  France,  gave  proof  that  he 
could  not  only  be  surprised,  but  quite  visibly  affected. 
"I — I — thank  you — Major!"  he  stammered,  and  ac 
cepted  the  old  man's  hand. 

There  was  a  strange  atmosphere  about  them,  an 
atmosphere  that  left  the  four  women  in  the  room  help 
less,  astonished,  veritably  spellbound  with  amazement, 
and  a  kind  of  awe.  So  an  outcrop  of  wild  fetishism,  or 
anything  else  at  once  tending  toward  the  religious  and 
the  everlastingly  peculiar,  might  have  dazed  them.  Pe 
culiar  little  thrills  were  traversing  Clotilde's  spine,  thrills 
of  faint  comprehension  and  wonder,  some  of  which 
tinged  astonishingly  like  high  pride  when  she  looked  at 
the  humble  young  air-soldier  called  Townes.  He  was  so 
humble,  now,  that  he  was  quite  flustered. 

"  Uh — just  over — uh  ?  "  asked  the  Major,  solemnly 
pumping  the  Corporal's  arm  up  and  down.  His  over 
whelming  pride  and  admiration,  his  more  than  fatherly 
tenderness  for  that  young  man  who  happened  to  be  in  the 
military  profession,  exuded  from  him,  filled  the  room, 
filled  everybody  in  the  room :  and  almost  over-filled,  as  it 
had  some  reason  to  do,  the  dumbly  staring  girl  who  had 
introduced  them. 

"  Not  just  exactly — sir,"  said  the  young  man,  begin 
ning  to  blush.  "  I've  been  in  Naples  for  the  past  few 
weeks — I  crossed  from  there." 

"  Uh — wounded — uh?"  surmised  the  Major,  pumping 
the  arm  more  gently,  so  flooding  the  young  man  with 
solicitude  that  the  young  man  became  additionally  flus 
tered,  stammered,  beginning  to  be  a  little  amused :  "  Well, 
not  exactly — sir — at  least  only  wounded  in  my  finer 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  30$ 

feelings — sir — I    mean — a    psychological    revulsion — if 
you—" 

Even  the  repetition  of  the  necessary  and  proper  "  sir  " 
could  not  soften  the  jolt  which  those  hazy  references  to 
"  finer  feelings  "  and  "  psychological  revulsion  "  seemed 
to  impart  to  the  Major.  He  ceased  to  pump  the  young 
man's  arm;  he  suddenly  dropped  the  young  man's  hand 
as  if  it  had  come  over  him  that  it  wasn't  so  much  a  hand 
as  a  desiccated  fish.  For  a  tumultuous  moment  doubt, 
indignation,  almost  rage,  struggled  with  affection,  with 
religious  pride.  The  conflict  was  too  much  for  him,  the 
descent  was  too  abrupt.  He  glared  around,  swaying  as 
if  made  physically  dizzy,  for  his  cap,  scooped  it  up, 
choked,  "  Gr-r-r-uf !  See  you  later ! "  in  a  voice  that 
made  it  more  of  a  threat  than  a  promise,  and  bolted. 

He  left  a  silent  and  a  stricken  community.  The  one 
male  member  of  it  was  the  first  to  recover  wits.  "  I'm 
sorry  he  went  off  like  that,"  remarked  the  male  member 
philosophically.  "  I  could  have  explained — I  hope  I'll 
see  him  again." 

1  The  Major  is  far  more  emotional  than  most  people 
give  him  credit  for  being."  Mrs.  Parkinson's  calm  voice 
conveyed  the  information,  and  continued :  "  He's  been 
driven  nearly  frantic  by  reading  Pacifist  stuff  in  the 
papers, — he  simply  won't  listen  to  explanations  of  such 
matters." 

"  Wasn't  he — wasn't  he  queer! "  mentioned  Ethel,  in  a 
voice  so  like  a  very  small  girl's  that  it  would  have  been 
appreciated  at  nearly  any  other  time. 

Clotilde,  without  looking  at  the  recent  soldier  who'd 
been  wounded  in  his  finer  feelings,  recrossed  to  her  chair 
on  the  far  side  of  Mrs.  Hooghtyling,  and  sat  down.  She 


3io  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

was  rather  more  desperately  at  sea  than  even  the  Major 
had  been  because  she  didn't  know  so  well  what  she  had 
expected,  nor  what  she  had  wanted. 

It  seemed  a  long  time  since  she  had  wished  to  stir  in 
Clement  Townes  something  like  a  "  psychological  revul 
sion  "  against  fighting.  He  had  sickened  of  the  beastly 
brawl,  and  resigned,  or  deserted — perhaps  her  cable  had 
been  the  causa  ccwsans.  She  had  been  perplexedly  play 
ing  with  that  surmise  almost  ever  since  her  first  sight  of 
him  at  the  door,  wondering  just  how  glad  she  was,  and 
ought  to  be,  if  her  surmise  proved  correct.  She  had  for 
gotten  that  possibility  while  the  Major  showered  Clement 
with  love  and  honor:  something  had  blazed  up  in  her 
then,  catching  fire  from  the  Major's  fire,  finding  good 
fuel  in  the  changes  that  Woodbridge's  continuous  war- 
suggestions  had  wrought  in  her  soul.  For  a  moment  she 
had  almost  loved  Corporal  Townes,  with  something  of 
the  Major's  communicated  passion;  and  now — she  felt 
some  of  the  Major's  desiccated  fish  reaction.  She  was 
far  less  interested,  just  then,  in  Corporal  Townes  than  in 
wondering  at  her  own  feelings  about  him. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MODERN  LOVE:  AT  LEAST,  ONE  PHASE  OF  THE  COM 
MON,  OR  CONVERSATIONAL,  VARIETY  OF  IT 

THEY  were  all  gone,  now,  except  Mrs.  Parkinson,  who 
was  helping  Edna  to  get  dinner  out  in  the  kitchen;  Clo- 
tilde  could  hear  them  chatting  together  in  a  war-engen 
dered  intimacy  that  made  her  isolation  in  the  living-room 
suggestive  of  a  neglected  nook  in  the  Great  American 
Desert.  Nursing  saturnine  thoughts  in  the  gloaming, 
she  meditated  the  wisdom  of  taking  a  car  down  to 
Kingston  forthwith,  there  to  board  a  train  for  New  York. 
Clement  was  coming  to  call  in  the  evening,  as  in  duty 
bound,  seeing  that  he  had  notoriously  come  up  to  see 
her,  but  she  could  leave  a  neat  little  note  for  Clement. 
It  was  her  present  feeling  that  Clement  had  bitterly  dis 
appointed  her:  he  had  done  that,  she  realized,  by  living 
up  to  her  most  optimistic  expectations  of  him,  and  she 
could  have  spewed  her  whole  consciousness  out,  like  an 
unpleasant  morsel,  as  she  admitted  the  truth  about 
herself. 

Without  the  conscious  going  home  of  one  argument 
to  her  intelligence,  her  Pacifism  had  been  badly  battered. 
Weak,  cheap  soldier  that  she  had  been  to  allow  rampant 
Woodbridge  Militarism  to  pervert  her  intelligence,  her 
feelings  deeper  than  intelligence!  A  good  solid  dose  of 
New  York  Modernism,  beginning  with  the  Brevoort  at 
one  o'clock  the  next  morning,  might  cure  her,  she  sur- 


312  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

mised :  and  was  shocked  by  recollecting  that  the  Brevoort, 
even  before  she  left,  had  been  pre-empted  by  French 
officers  and  representatives,  forcing  most  of  the  mid 
night  Modernistic  revellers  into  less  desirable  quarters. 
The  old  Brevoort,  so  long  the  haunt  of  midnight  Mod 
ernists,  given  over  to  French  war-makers — it  was  typical 
— perhaps  terrible — 

At  any  rate,  Modernism,  as  represented  by  its  two 
largest  remaining  activities,  anti-war  talk  and  free  love, 
would  be  rampant  down  at  the  Black  Cat:  and  yet  the 
idea  of  a  riotous  midnight  festa  at  the  Black  Cat  rather 
nauseated  her.  Modernism  had  been  changed  by  the 
war,  changed  and  narrowed;  as  represented  by  its  present 
adherents,  it  stood  chiefly  for  a  baffled,  disgusted,  loqua 
cious  Pacifism  that  was  on  the  wane  since  it  was  so 
manifestly  futile,  and  for  an  increasing  eroticism,  fur 
thered  by  ever  more  numerous,  and  more  risque,  balls, 
dances,  "  routs,"  and  "  revels."  Successive  announce 
ments  of  these  affairs,  forwarded  from  New  York, 
kept  Clotilde  acquainted  with  Modernism's  progress. 

It  all  reminded  her  of  the  Italian  Renaissance :  she  had 
once  hoped  that  Modernism  might  bring  something  of  a 
Renaissance  to  America.  She  looked  back  to  her  early 
acquaintance  with  the  Village,  some  five  years  before, 
remembering  how,  sometimes,  parties  had  talked  till 
dawn,  about  Beauty — whether  America  was  revealing  a 
new  architecture  in  her  skyscrapers — about  utility,  about 
Truth,  and  Goodness,  all  in  the  light  of  the  latest  dis 
coveries  in  biology,  anthropology,  economics.  Those 
intellectual  talk-fests,  even  if  they  had  been  little  more 
than  scientific  babble — as  the  night-long  discussions  of 
the  Renaissance  had  been  little  more  than  metaphysical 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  313 

babble — had  fired  brains,  idealisms,  while  keeping  senses 
cool.  How  the  senses  had  crept  in,  how  the  whole 
intellectual  structure  had  collapsed  before  the  attack  of 
outside  brutalities  that  drew  away  the  strongest  intel 
lectuals  to  fight  for  more  fundamental  truths  and  free 
doms — had  not  Edith  Sichel  explained  this  for  Greenwich 
Village  as  well  as  for  Italy,  in  her  handbook  on  "  The 
Renaissance"?  The  Greenwich  Village  awakening  had 
descended  to  something  of  the  same  state  that  produced 
the  late-Renaissance  orgies  in  Rome,  and  for  much  the 
same  reasons.  It  had  no  more  faith,  no  more  vision :  its 
ideals  had  changed  from  Utopian  to  Hedonistic. 

Clotilde  remembered  recent  happenings,  more  recent 
announcements  and  rumors.  "  The  Pagan  Rout  "  of  the 
summer  had  been  eclipsed  by  the  daring  of  later  revels. 
In  the  early  fall  "  The  September  Morn  Ball "  had  set  a 
new  mark,  only  to  be  surpassed  by  "  The  Falling  Leaf 
Eve  Revel " — announced  by  a  drawing,  on  gold  paper, 
of  a  post-impressionistic  Eve  both  before  and  after  the 
leaf  had  fallen.  The  "  Bal  Primitive,"  "  Paris  and  the 
Golden  Apple,"  and  "  A  Night  in  a  Harem  "  registered 
successive  advances  in  Modernistic  war-time  achievement. 
Costumes  for  handsome  young  movie  heroes  of  very 
scanty  leopard  and  lion  skins,  for  Modernistic  damsels 
of  little  more  than  dancing  pumps  and  a  few  bits  of  black 
court-plaster — despite  her  Modernistic  refusal  to  be 
shocked  by  these  activities,  Clotilde  recognized,  for  her 
self,  an  idiosyncrasy  against  them  that  made  them 
unpalatable. 

She  suspected,  and  frankly  admitted  to  herself,  that 
she  was  spoiled  for  adventuring  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Greenwich  Village  night-fighters,  changed  and  personal 


3H  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

as  the  objects  of  their  prime  assaults  had  become.  Even 
if  their  more  'Utopian  ante-bellum  activities  had  still 
maintained,  she  might  have  been  spoiled:  that  gallant 
adventuring  had  met  competition  no  less  valiant  than  had 
served  to  turn  the  heads  of  some  millions  of  well-founded 
European  Socialists.  Cheap  and  conventional  waves  of 
emotion  had  battered  her  little  ship,  torn  the  gallant 
ensign  of  olive-branch,  torch,  and  dove-rampant  from  the 
prow,  made  her  rather  seasick,  ready  to  put  in  at  the  first 
port,  no  matter  how  far  from  the  fabled  splendors  of 
Cathay.  That  it  was  an  unusually  stormy  year,  that 
millions  of  other  Cathay-bound  pilots  were  in  her  state  of 
mind,  that  other  millions  had  already  turned  back — her 
knowledge  of  these  catastrophes  comforted  her  a  little. 

There  was  left  the  possibility  of  a  little  excursion 
toward  the  now-beginning-to-be-explored  Isles  of  Free 
Union,  in  company  with  Mr.  Townes,  for  example. 
However,  most  of  her  recent  longing  for  adventure  in 
those  lines  seemed  to  have  evaporated,  and  it  evaporated 
faster  when  she  thought  of  Clement's  wounded  finer 
feelings. 

She  rather  hoped  the  Major  would  disable  Clement. 
Clement  had  refused  an  invitation  to  dinner  on  the 
ground  that  he  wanted  to  see  the  Major.  The  Major, 
Mrs.  Parkinson  suspected,  wouldn't  come  to  dinner. 
"  I'm  afraid  the  Major  didn't  care  for  Mr.  Townes — 
when  he  found  out — "  hesitated  Mrs.  Parkinson,  after 
Ethel  and  Clement  had  departed  together.  "  He — Mr. 
Townes,  is  a  Pacifist,  is  he  not  ?  " 

"  I  believe  he  is,"  Clotilde  had  admitted. 

Mrs.  Parkinson,  with  discreet  politeness,  had  ended  the 
matter  with :  "  I  thought  he  was  one  of  that  Greenwich 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  315 

Village  group — not  that  they  aren't  acting  nobly  accord 
ing  to  their  lights."  This  had  not  only  settled  Mr. 
Townes,  but  put  Clotilde  herself  politely  but  firmly 
beyond  the  pale.  Left  like  Hagar  with  a  grown-up, 
unrelated  Ishmael  on  her  hands,  Clotilde  surmised  that 
her  enjoyment  of  Woodbridge,  as  long  as  her  accepted 
war-opinions  were  Pacifistic,  was  very  much  at  an  end. 

"  Well,  I  think  it  was  bully  of  him — simply  bully — and, 
of  course,  the  whole  thing's  likely  to  be  over  before  he 
gets  into  the  trenches,"  Clotilde  heard  Mrs.  Parkinson 
saying  to  Edna,  as  the  two  of  them  came  into  the  room, 
bearing  matters  for  the  dinner  table:  one  corner  of  the 
Klings'  big  living-room  did  service  as  a  dining-room  at 
meal  times. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — and  I  think  Artie'd  feel  disap 
pointed,  now,  if  he  didn't  get  to  kill  at  least  one  Hun," 
said  Edna.  Mrs.  Parkinson  lighted  candles  on  the  table. 
They  took  no  more  notice  of  Clotilde,  moping  in  her 
corner,  than  if  she  had  been  on  another  planet. 

"  Well,  if  he  has  the  courage  to  enlist,  I  think  that's 
quite  enough,"  protested  Mrs.  Parkinson  gently.  "  And 
really,  it's  likely  to  be  over  pretty  soon:  the  Germans 
certainly  can't  outlast  the  winter.  You  ought  to  hear  the 
Major  roaring  about  the  present  big  drive,  you  know — 
wasn't  it  splendid? — Haig  catching  them  napping,  and 
getting  almost  to  Cambrai,  simply  slaughtering  them 
beautifully — the  beasts !  " 

"  I  haven't  been  reading  the  papers — I'll  begin  to 
morrow  morning,"  said  Edna;  and  Clotilde  caught  a 
hungry,  triumphant  gleam  in  her  eyes.  "  Did  he  really 
kill  a  good  many  of  them?  " 

"  He  did  1     You  see,  he  sent  the  tanks  forward  to  cut 


316  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  wire — the  stupid  Huns  weren't  expecting  any  attack 
before  the  preliminary  bombardment,  you  know.  Sir 
Julian  Byng  was  the  general  directly  in  command — Oh, 
I'd  like  to  kiss  him !  The  British  Tommies  followed  the 
tanks — ripe  for  killing — you  know,  the  Germans  have 
been  such  beastly  dirty  fighters  throughout  this  war — 
inventing  gas,  and  flame-throwers,  and  murdering  de 
fenseless  women  and  babies — that  the  other  armies  enjoy 
killing  them  like  pigs!  And  I  guess,  in  the  last  few 
days,  they've  killed  a  good  many  thousands,  too — thank 
God!" 

"  Yes — bully  for  the  Tommies !  But  you  said  the 
Major  was  roaring  about  the  drive?"  suggested  Edna. 
"  You  don't  mean  he  doesn't  like  it?  " 

"  Well,  the  Major  doesn't  love  the  British — I  really 
think  it's  his  Revolutionary  ancestry,"  explained  the 
Major's  wife;  ''he's  always  howling  because  he  says 
they'll  have  the  Germans  smashed  before  we  can  get  at 
them,  you  see.  He  grumps  around  for  days  after  every 
British  gain.  The  Italian  drive  quite  cheered  him  up — 
you  know,  when  the  Huns,  by  treachery  and  corruption 
got  past  the  Italian  frontier — after  debauching  the  igno 
rant  Italian  soldiers,  as  they  have  the  poor  ignorant 
Russians — and  as  they  have  us,  too,  far  more  than  most 
of  us  have  any  suspicion  of ! " 

Edna  had  given  up  any  pretense  of  setting  the  table; 
the  two  women  stood  close  together,  their  ardent  faces  lit 
by  the  upward  glow  of  the  candles.  "  And  the  Major — 
he  was  cheered  up  by  that  Italian  collapse  ?  "  asked  Edna. 

"  Well,  he  pretended  to  be  sore  about  it — of  course," 
said  Mrs.  Parkinson;  "  but,  in  his  heart,  he  was  glad — the 
old  sinner !  Every  German  gain  gives  us  a  better  chance 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  317 

to  be  in  at  the  death,  you  see, — that's  how  he  looks  at  it ! 
It's  his  one  dream  and  hope  in  life  to  see  an  American 
army  in  Berlin — I  hope  he  sees  the  day !  " 

Edna  said,  a  little  breathlessly :  "  Do  you  know,  I  think 
(Artie — he  must  have  been  dreaming  about  that  one  night ! 
He  kept  poking  me  in  the  ribs,  and  choking  things  like 
'  Die,  swine ! '  and  '  Berlin  ' — or  '  Zoom  Berlin,'  it 
sounded  like — he  used  to  '  Zoom '  a  good  deal  at  night 
— especially  when  he'd  begin  to  prod  at  me.  It  was 
'  Zoom  Rhine '  and  '  Zoom  Berlin,'  and  '  Zoom '  a  lot 
of  other  places." 

"  Undoubtedly  he  was  thinking  of  just  that.  He  took 
the  war  hard,  excruciatingly  hard,  didn't  he?  " 

"  Yes,  he  sure  did !  "  Edna  smiled  faintly.  "  Poor 
Artie — if  I  hadn't  let  him  go  he'd  probably  have  pined 
his  life  away! — Dear,  he  left  me  a  letter — a  wonderful 
letter:  I  think  you're  the  only  person  in  the  world  I'd 
want  to  read  it." 

"  Thank  you — I'd  love  to,  dearest !  " 

"  He  doesn't  expect  to  see  an  American  army  in  Berlin, 
but  he  says  it  would  be  the  greatest  day  in  the  history  of 
the  world  if  one  could  get  there — the  greatest  for  free 
dom,  and  justice,  and  honor,  and — and — " 

;<  Yes,  dear — and  so  it  would !  The  very  greatest  day 
in  the  history  of  the  world !  God  send  we  live  to  see  it !  " 

Edna's  upliftedness  of  face  changed  to  doubt:  she 
sniffed  the  air :  "  The  corn-bread ! "  she  gasped,  and 
scurried  toward  the  kitchen. 

Mrs.  Parkinson  laughed,  turned  to  look  around  the 
room,  caught  sight  of  Clotilde.  "  Oh,  Miss  West — 
excuse  me,"  she  said;  "  but,  you  see,  we  got  to  thinking 
of  you  as  Miss  Westbrook — we  were  always  coming  up 


318  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

to  call,  but  even  we  Woodbridgers  sometimes  have  busy 
spells.  The  Red  Cross  has  been  taking  every  moment 
of  my  spare  time." 

"  Of  course,"  admitted  Clotilde  faintly. 

"  I  was  merely  going  to  remark,  Miss  Rootling,"  con 
tinued  the  Major's  wife  gently,  "  that  I  hoped  you  didn't 
mind  our  talking  about  the  war.  You  see,  it's  so  much 
on  our  minds — in  fact,  I've  been  so  busy  with  Red  Cross 
work  that  I  haven't  pretended  to  keep  up  my  social  duties. 
Otherwise,  please  believe  me,  we  should  have  seen  more 
of  you.  I  do  hope  Edna  will  bring  you  down  to  call 
soon,"  she  concluded,  and  sailed  away  toward  more  con 
genial  company  in  the  kitchen. 

"  Yes — and  have  you  both  freeze  me  out  by  talking 
nothing  but  war — or  worse,  trying  to  talk  of  other 
things,"  Clotilde  muttered  after  her.  Clotilde  was  in  a 
decidedly  peevish  frame  of  mind.  The  war  had  worked 
into  her  nerves. 

"  Tell  a  fool  a  thing  often  enough,  and  tell  it  with 
sufficient  conviction,"  she  chastised  herself,  "  and  any 
fool'll  believe  it!  But  I  won't  believe  it  will  be  the 
greatest  day  in  the  history  of  the  world  when  an  Ameri 
can  army  gets  into  Berlin.  It  may  be  an  important 
historical  event — but  it  won't  be  the  most  important — 
which  is  quite  an  admission  for  a  semi-Pacifist,  even  an 
ailing  and  generally  disgusted  one,  to  make !  " 

Dinner,  for  her,  was  something  of  a  misery;  the  con 
versation  was  always  hovering  around  the  outskirts  of 
the  war,  and  always  being  shooed  away  by  the  two 
enthusiasts  responsible  for  its  hovering.  Clotilde,  by 
dessert-time,  had  reached  a  state  of  vivid  exasperation. 
A  passing  comment  on  the  stewed  prunes  that  served  for 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  319 

dessert  to  the  effect  that  war  economy  was  already  going 
into  effect  in  the  household,  shooed  away  by  another, 
from  Edna,  to  the  effect  that  she  wanted  to  make  a  con 
siderable  contribution,  in  Artie's  name,  to  the  Red  Cross, 
now  that  the  war  meant  so  much  to  them,  and  that  in 
turn  shooed  away  by  the  palpable  shooing  remark  that 
it  was  such  a  wonderful  summery  evening  for  October 
— Clotilde,  with  shining  eyes,  unnaturally  rosy  face,  rose 
from  beneath  the  crushing  last  straw. 

"  Please,"  she  said,  looking  from  Edna  to  Mrs.  Park 
inson,  "why  can't  we  talk  about  the  war?  It  is  inter 
esting — and  perhaps  I'm  not  such  a  hide-bound  Pacifist 
as  you  think  I  am.  At  least  I  can  understand  how 
intensely  important  the  war  is  to  both  of  you," 

They  looked  at  her  with  a  far-away,  superior  air;  so 
temeritous  youth,  venturing  with  lightly  understanding, 
intellectual  feet  on  emotional  and  sacred  ground,  was  ever 
reproved.  Mrs.  Parkinson  said,  somewhat  sadly :  "  I 
try  not  to  think  of  the  war  in  its  relation  to  myself.  I 
realize  that  the  war  is  not  important  because  it  is  intensely 
important  to  me." 

Edna  said,  with  the  same  air  of  sage  chiding:  "  Dear, 
ever  since  I  read  Artie's  letter,  I've  understood  how  small 
I  am — the  war  isn't  intensely  important  to  me — I'm  be 
ginning  to  get  it  in  its  right  perspective — thanks  to  Artie, 
and  Mrs.  Parkinson,  and  the  Major." 

Clotilde' s  cheeks  flamed;  her  emotions  were  reaching 
the  sharp  edge  of  intensity  which  they  had  reached 
nearly  four  weeks  before,  while  she  watched  beside  Helen 
Hope.  "  Well,  if  the  war's  your  private  property — " 
she  snapped  out,  before  she  could  stop  herself;  then, 
realizing  her  miserable  failure  at  calmness,  even  at  any 


320  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

adequate  and  explosive  retort,  she  jabbed  her  spoon  into 
the  remnants  of  her  stewed  prunes — she  hated  stewed 
prunes,  anyway,  and  their  war-connection  didn't  improve 
their  flavor — and  strode  into  Edna's  bedroom.  At 
Edna's  most  earnest  solicitation,  she  had  accepted  a 
drawer  in  Edna's  bureau  and  a  cot  in  the  living-room, 
as  her  accommodations  in  the  house  of  Kling. 

Edna  immediately  followed  her,  bearing  gifts  of  heal 
ing:  "  Clo' — dearest  child — I  hope  nothing  we  said — " 

"  I'm  not  a  child — I've  attained  my  majority — even  if 
I  am  a  fool !  "  snapped  Clotilde,  as  well  as  she  could  with 
a  mouthful  of  hairpins.  She  was  frantically  taking 
down  her  hair,  frantically  preparing  to  dress,  so  that  she 
might  put  that  house  and  all  its  dust,  war-dust,  behind 
her.  "  Yes,  Edna,  I  am  acting  like  a  baby — I'm  exas 
perated — please  make  my  apologies  to  Mrs.  Parkinson. 
I'm  going  to  dress,  now — even  babies  have  to  be  suitably 
dressed ! " 

"  Well,  dear — "  Edna's  patient  voice  might  have 
soothed  a  genuine  year-old,  whatever  its  tolerant,  slightly 
supercilious  patience  did  to  Clotilde.  "  Then  we'll  hope 
to  see  you — when  you're  dressed." 

Quite  gently,  as  one  might  do  to  a  ructious  infant, 
Edna  closed  her  raging  guest  in  with  her  ragings  and 
went  away. 

Clotilde  raged  quite  a  bit.  She  raged  against  Edna, 
and  war,  and  Militarists,  and  Pacifists,  and  Greenwich 
Village,  and  Clement  Townes,  and  Woodbridge,  and  the 
world  in  general.  By  the  time  she  had  dressed  herself 
in  her  Quaker  costume,  thoughtlessly  adding  the  gray  kid 
pumps  even  though  she  expected  soon  to  be  walking,  she 
felt  much  better.  The  Quaker  costume,  by  its  contrast 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  321 

with  her  somewhat  overheated  intervals,  calmed  and 
quieted  her.  She  liked  herself  in  it.  If  she  should 
happen  to  meet  a  certain  Mr.  Townes,  it  would  convey 
to  him  an  inkling  of  the  cool  gray  calmness  with  which 
he  might  expect  to  be  treated.  Provided,  of  course,  that 
the  Major,  after  listening  to  a  Pacifistic  interpretation  of 
Clement's  finer  feelings  and  psychological  revulsions,  left 
one  limb  of  Clement  untorn  from  every  other. 

It  was  nearly  eight  o'clock;  thanks  to  the  Woodbridge 
ladies'  war-talk,  dinner  had  been  late;  she  might  meet 
Clement,  perhaps  on  the  path,  perhaps  on  the  road. 
Otherwise,  she  would  go  right  down  to  the  Inn,  write 
him  a  note,  order  a  car,  and  away  to  Kingston  and  New 
York.  New  York,  while  offering  no  very  definite  appeal, 
was  infinitely  preferable  to  Woodbridge,  hotbed  of  a 
particularly  insulting  and  irrational  form  of  Militarism 
that  it  had  become. 

She  took  out  her  coat,  the  long  gray  melton  one  that 
she  had  bought  in  spite  of  its  military  cut;  she  never 
thought  of  it  by  its  ridiculous  designation  of  "  Ladies' 
London  Military  Trench  Coat."  She  would  need  a  hat, 
of  course,  on  a  trip  to  New  York,  even  if  her  baggage 
had  to  come  later.  She  selected  a  little  round  evening 
turban  that  could  easily  be  concealed  in  a  fold  of  the  big 
coat.  She  intended  to  make  no  farewells;  like  Artie,  she 
would  rusefully  avoid  that  sentimentality;  she  would  go 
for  a  walk,  and  continue,  by  motor  and  train,  to  New 
York.  A  handbag,  containing  her  ready  money  and  the 
keys  to  her  mother's  apartment,  also  readily  concealable 
in  the  coat,  need  be  her  only  baggage. 

Fully  prepared,  further  inspirited  by  her  ruse,  she  went 
out  into  the  living-room.  Edna  and  Mrs,  Parkinson  had 


322  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

their  heads  together  over  the  supper-table.  Mrs.  Park 
inson  turned  around  and  Edna  looked  up  as  Clotilde 
appeared. 

"  I'm  going  for  a  little  stroll — perhaps  I'll  meet  Mr. 
Townes,"  said  Clotilde,  standing  all  grace  and  gentleness 
and  soft  color  before  them,  as  radiant  a  Quakeress  as 
ever  graced  protracted  meeting  or  music  hall.  "  Mrs. 
Parkinson,  please  let  me  apologize  for  losing  my  head 
at  dinner." 

"  My  dear,  I  understood  perfectly !  "  Mrs.  Parkinson 
rose,  a  fine  figure  of  a  grande  dame,  and  held  out  her 
hand.  "  We  were — really  quite  gauche!  I  know  you'll 
overlook  it.  And  I'm  positively  going  to  make  Edna 
bring  you  down  for  tea — right  away !  " 

"  Thank  you  so  much ! "  said  Clotilde,  nodded  at 
Edna,  and  strolled  forth,  across  the  porch,  down  the 
path,  into  the  starlit,  blue-misty,  warm-crisp  October 
night. 

She  walked  slowly,  made  more  sure  of  herself,  more 
ready  for  any  emergencies  in  the  way  of  meeting  a  man, 
by  her  very  creditable  leave-taking.  There  was  no  such 
adventure  as  meeting  a  man,  all  the  way  across  the 
meadows,  through  the  grove  of  half-denuded  maple  and 
hickory  trees,  over  the  little  wooden  bridge  across  the 
brook,  up  to  the  stile  that  led  onto  the  road.  She  paused 
at  the  stile;  she  missed  the  half -expected  adventure;  she 
was  in  a  fine,  high-strung  mood,  a  mood  proper  for  a 
great  adventure — such  as  informing  a  man  she  had  sum 
moned  from  France — or  from  Naples,  it  appeared — 

Why  Naples?  What  had  he  been  doing  in  Naples? 
Why  hadn't  he  answered  her  cable,  if,  as  it  appeared, 
he  had  received  it — if,  as  further  appeared,  he  had  been 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  323 

moved  by  it  to  seek  her  out,  even  in  the  wilds  of  primeval 
Woodbridge  ? 

For  perhaps  fifteen  minutes  she  stood  by  the  stile 
debating  these  questions,  and  a  more  immediate  one, 
namely,  what  was  keeping  Clement?  The  lack  of  satis 
factory  answers  to  any  of  them  did  not  soothe  her  ruffled 
state  of  mind,  nor  cool  her  heated  emotions.  Physically, 
in  the  course  of  that  waiting,  she  did  get  rather  chilly; 
she  debated  putting  on  the  lady's  London  military  trench 
coat  that  she  carried  under  one  arm,  but  that  would  have 
spoiled  the  effect  of  the  Quaker  costume,  not  to  mention 
leaving  her  with  a  hat  and  a  handbag  on  her  hands.  As 
a  substitute,  she  walked  back  and  forth  along  the  path 
through  the  meadow,  toe-dancing  a  little  to  set  her  blood 
in  motion. 

"  What  on  earth  is  keeping  him  ?  "  she  asked  the  stile 
petulantly,  returning  to  it  for  the  third  time.  The  stile, 
being  wooden  throughout,  made  no  response  other 
than  to  permit  the  missing  Clement  to  rise  from  the 
roadward  side  of  it,  leap  lightly  over  it  as  if  it 
had  been  a  hurdle,  and  descend  at  the  startled  lady's 
side. 

"  Well — "  He  recovered  himself  with  creditable 
celerity,  bent  forward,  swept  the  ground  with  a  sample 
of  the  latest  New  York  mode  in  young  men's  soft  hats. 
"  I  thought  it  was  you  coming !  Your  walk,  you  know 
— you  walk  like  a  queen,  Clo' !  Your  walk  and  your  eye 
brows — you  know  I  always  said  those  were  your  two 
perfections — one  more  than  is  possessed  by  any  other 
lady  on  the  face  of  the  globe ! "  He  reached  for  her 
right  hand,  the  one  not  busy  holding  the  trench  coat  and 
the  other  commodities;  she  let  him  take  it.  She  was 


324  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

astonishingly  compliant,  it  occurred  to  her,  everything 
considered. 

"  I  was  beginning  to  think  the  Major  had  murdered 
you,"  she  said.  "  I  believe  he's  addicted  to  murder — 
even  more  than  most  military  men." 

Corporal  Townes  laughed,  laughed  like  a  boy,  with 
whole-hearted  appreciation.  "  He  is  a  rather  fierce  old 
party,  isn't  he?"  commented  the  Corporal.  "Well,  he 
would  have  murdered  me — if  I'd  accepted  half  the  stuff 
he  tried  to  make  me  drink !  I  told  him  I  was  a  Prohibi 
tionist — got  away  without  touching  a  drop;  and  left  him 
happier  than  if  I'd  put  away  all  the  stuff  in  the  dozen 
odd  bottles  he  trotted  out — he's  strong  for  Prohibition — 
in  the  army !  " 

Clotilde  looked  at  him,  at  his  effervescing  boyishness, 
and  could  not  find  it  in  her  heart  to  send  him  away,  at 
once,  in  search  of  a  motor  to  bear  her  to  Kingston,  where 
night  trains  might  be  boarded  for  New  York.  If  she 
was  Hagar,  driven  out  of  the  camps  of  the  bloodthirsty 
Philistines,  or  something  like  that,  he  made  a  very  good 
Ishmael,  a  boon  companion  for  her  loneliness.  Her 
feeling  toward  him,  she  had  told  herself  several  times 
during  her  recent  strolling,  much  resembled  a  motherly 
tolerance. 

"  Then  you  and  the  Major  didn't  quarrel?  "  she  asked. 

"  Say  not !  No,  I'm  all  blue  and  ace-high  with  the 
Major!  Say,  he's  a  peach — hope  the  devil  he  does  get 
over —  But,  say ! "  He  came  a  little  closer  to  her,  lifted 
a  warning  finger.  "  A  warning — sweet  Quakeress — a 
word  about  Prohibition !  "  He  was  very  close  to  her 
now,  his  hat  tucked  under  one  arm,  his  smooth,  clean-cut, 
long-nosed  face,  impishly  solemn,  within  a  few  inches  of 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  325 

hers.  "  Know  why  I  refused  all  that  beautiful  booze, 
eh?  Tell  you!  Not  that  I  was  overstrong  for  Prohibi 
tion,  but  thought  you  might  be."  He  backed  away  a 
little,  and  delivered  his  announcement  from  a  distance 
that  made  it  less  threatening:  "  You  know — '  the  lips  that 
touch  liquor  shall  never  touch  mine ! '  All  the  way  up 
here,  Clo' — in  fact  ever  since  I  saw  you  there  when 
Mrs.  What's-her-name  sprung  her  little  surprise — for 
which  she  coached  me  all  the  way  to  the  house — all  the 
way,  all  the  time,  you  know,  I  been  wondering  whether 
you  wouldn't  let  me  kiss  you — this  evening — have, 
really!" 

Clotilde's  bosom  heaved;  his  stand-offishness  robbed 
her  of  any  excuse  for  showing  other  emotion,  either  pro 
or  anti.  "  You're  just  as  wild  as  ever,  Clement,"  she 
said;  evidently  the  emotion  was  supposed  to  be  anti. 
"  Do  I  look  as  if  I  were  expecting  anyone  to  kiss 
me?" 

He  had  to  come  closer  to  make  sure  how  she  looked; 
he  accomplished  the  manceuver  with  such  delicacy  that  a 
timorous  bird  wouldn't  have  been  alarmed,  such  was  his 
every  evidence  of  pure  intellectual  curiosity.  Clotilde 
composed  herself  into  the  living  image  of  a  blooming 
young  lady  not  expecting  to  be  kissed;  only  her  bosom 
heaved,  her  cheeks  glowed. 

Corporal  Townes,  after  a  lingering  inspection  that 
spared  neither  her  cheeks,  nor  her  bosom,  nor  the  little 
V-shaped  expanse  of  rose-tinted  neck  between,  stepped 
back,  sighed,  shook  his  head.  "  You  don't  seem  to  be 
expecting  it,"  he  admitted,  with  another  sigh,  and 
thoughtfully  stroked  his  longish  chin.  "  But,  say !  "  He 
indicated,  by  the  simple  method  of  pointing  a  finger  at 


326  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

his  forehead,  the  appearance  of  an  idea.  "  Say — you 
look  as  if  you  needed  it — you  do,  really !  And  what  you 
need,  Clo',  that's  certainly  far  more  important  than  what 
you  expect!  Now  you  take  my  advice — " 

"  We're  becoming  ridiculous !     This  is  no  time — " 

" — and  accept  a  little — on  trial.  Just  one — a  sample, 
Clo' !  Can  be  returned,  if  you  don't  like  it — submit  half 
a  dozen — same  returnable  basis — " 

"  Clement !     I  tell  you—" 

"  But  please,  Clo' !  Look  at  me — haven't  I  come  all 
the  way  from  Naples — beastly  old  tub  that  made  me  sea 
sick  all  the  way  over — nothin'  to  eat  but  dog  biscuit 
masqueradin's  war  bread —  That's  devotion,  Clo' — that 
is ! "  He  ventured  to  pat  the  outstanding  collar  of  the 
lady's  London  military  trench  coat.  "Just  one,  Clo' — 
you're  so  pretty,  Clo' — I'll  be  most  unhappy  if  you 
don't ! "  He  allowed  his  hat  to  drop,  and  patted  Clo- 
tilde's  motionless,  nearly  nerveless  right  arm,  his  own 
right  hand  meanwhile  voyaging  further  along  the  trench 
coat's  collar  till  it  discovered  her  left  arm.  "  Just  one 
— on  your  cheek,  Clo' — most  wonderful  color  it  is — 
noticed  it  even  in  this  beastly  poor  light  that  keeps  me 
from  seeing  you — now  honest — "  He  was  bending  over 
her;  she  was  as  resistless  as  a  charmed  bird,  and  her 
breast  fluttered  like  a  bird's.  "  It  won't  hurt — really — 
and  just  one !  "  He  had  kissed  her  lightly  on  the  cheek, 
her  left  one,  and  was  standing  away  from  her,  a  good 
two  feet  away,  with  his  arms  folded  across  his  breast, 
before  she  knew  what  had  happened. 

And  yet,  even  before  she  caught  her  breath  again,  she 
knew  what  had  happened,  knew  it  with  a  depth  of  under 
standing,  a  dazzling  illumination,  totally  beyond  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  327 

horizon  of  a  less  Modernistic  young  person.  Even  in  the 
midst  of  a  swaying  turbulence  of  emotion  that  might 
have  thrown  a  know-nothing  Miss  on  the  mercy  and  gen 
erosity  of  a  not  naturally  merciful  and  generous  young 
male,  Clotilde  kept  command  of  their  joint  adventure, 
as  she  had  to  do  for  love's  prosperity,  seeing  that  not  one 
man  in  thousands  can  learn  of  love  except  a  woman  pass 
along  to  him  her  knowledge  of  it,  granted  to  her,  together 
with  other  terrible  and  beautiful  responsibilities  by  what 
ever  Chance  or  Providence  rules  the  world.  Therefore, 
according  to  its  Priestess's  probity  is  the  prosperity  of 
Love  among  mortals. 

Clotilde  said,  not  frightened  by  ignorance  of  the  im 
pending  things,  but  calm  and  deeply  glad:  "You're  not 
the  same,  Clem — I  was  quite  wrong.  You're  like  a  great 
big,  fresh,  bumptious,  irresponsible  boy!  What's  be 
come  of  your  sophistication,  your  cynicism — your  grand 
old  age?" 

He  confessed  to  surprise,  even  to  shock :  "  Say ! 
Speaking  of  sophistication — " 

"  Oh,  that  bit  of  observation  didn't  require  any 
sophistication.  It  sticks  out  all  over  you — and  it's  quite 
interesting." 

"  To  me,  too !  I  like  to  be  talked  about,  like  to  be 
noticed."  He  stared  at  her;  his  arch-eyebrowed  appear 
ance  told  her  that  he  was  interested  not  only  in  her 
analysis  of  himself,  but  in  the  person  who'd  made  it. 
"  Say — you're  perfectly  right.  Seeing  you  coming — 
waiting  for  you  behind  that  old  stile — well,  it  made  me 
feel  downright  kiddish,  you  know." 

"  I  see — it's  merely  one  of  your  sprightly  moods — 
we'll  soon  have  you  delightfully  bored  and  cynical  again," 


328  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

said  Clotilde;  she  was  somewhat  disappointed,  not  that 
that  affected  the  main  event.  The  main  event  was  quite 
inevitable,  no  matter  what  he  was  or  was  not,  or  had  or 
had  not  become.  The  stars  in  their  courses  had  decided 
that  she  was  to  love  him.  She  remembered  passages 
from  Modernistic  books.  Her  recent  hatred  of  him,  she 
recognized  now,  was  a  mere  contribution  to  the  main 
event. 

"  Oh,  I  say — no — no,  I  don't  think  so !  "  he  protested, 
considerably  stirred,  as  he  had  every  right  to  be,  by  the 
manifest  disappointment  in  her  voice.  "  It's  really  deeper 
— the  change  in  me — than  meeting  you  here,  Clo' — than 
being  quite  delightfully  on  the  verge  of  falling  in  love 
with  you!  Yes — I  mean  it,  dear — I  suppose  it'll  sound 
strange  to  you,  I  dare  say  you  won't  believe  me — well, 
I  won't  press  it  now — " 

She  laughed  at  him  a  little :  she  was  very  wise,  at  least 
by  comparison  with  him.  So  an  experienced  hunter 
might  laugh  at  a  bumptious  young  lion  walking  dig- 
nifiedly  around  a  steel-barred  prison  and  beginning  to 
scent  the  nearness  of  a  trap.  What  a  fine  young  igno 
ramus  he  was !  "  But  we  were  talking  about  your  boy 
ishness,"  she  said,  distracting  his  attention  before  he 
might  be  too  rudely  shocked  by  other  discoveries;  she 
shuddered  a  little,  for  a  slight  crispness  was  coming  into 
the  mellow  warmth  of  the  northward  flowing  air. 
"  You're  chilly !  "  he  decided,  instantly,  making  her  glad 
that  she  was.  "  Can't  I  help  you  on  with  your  coat — 
or  shall  we  go  back  to  the  house — or — " 

"  No :  there  are  visitors — no  place  to  talk,"  she  said, 
"  and  if  I  put  on  my  coat,  it'll  cover  my  Quaker  costume 
— which  I  put  on  especially  for  you  to  admire.  Let's 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  329 

just  walk  up  and  down  a  little  while. — If  the  path's  wide 
enough  for  two !  " 

He  stepped  to  her  side.  "  It  is — if  we  may  be  per 
mitted  to  link  arms — and  you'll  let  me  carry  your  coat." 
She  handed  over  the  coat,  with  a  caution  about  the  bonnet 
and  handbag  inside,  extended  her  elbow :  "  Link  up ! " 
she  commanded,  and  continued,  in  an  impersonal  way, 
while  he  thoroughly  obeyed :  "  Is  it  your  brief  experience 
at  soldiering  that's  renewed  your  youth?" 

"  Yes — as  a  matter  of  fact — that's  it — I  hope  you'll 
forgive  me  for  having  fallen,  temporarily,  under  the  spell 
of  the  Militarists."  She  felt  that  he  shrugged  his  shoul 
ders.  "  There's  nothing  to  renew  a  fellow's  youth  like 
getting  down  to  elemental,  primeval  facts,  you  know.  I 
hope  you'll  forgive  me  if  I  admit  that  I  found  the  war 
— ^well,  stimulating,  healthy  in  its  effect  on  me — in  some 
of  its  effects,  anyway.  You  see,  having  something  ex 
citing  to  do — living  close  to  such  elemental  troubles  as 
sudden  and  violent  death — ' 

He  began  to  warm  to  his  subject,  ceased  to  apologize 
for  it  and  for  himself :  "  The  fact  is — and  it  struck  me 
as  pretty  significant — I  never  really  laughed,  never  really 
guffawed  from  a  full  heart,  you  know — till  I'd  killed  a 
couple  of  men — sent  them  scooting  down,  with  their  old 
boat  blazing  around  them — " 

"Boat?"  repeated  Clotilde,  strangely  alert. 

"The  fellows  call  the  'planes  boats,"  he  explained; 
he  seemed  a  little  apologetic,  whether  because  of  his  con 
fessed  amusement  in  murder,  or  because  the  fellows  com 
mitted  the  indignity  of  calling  their  airplanes  boats,  was 
not  quite  clear.  "  It  came  from  air-boat,  I  guess." 
s  "  Yes;  go  on."  Her  voice  was  quick  and  nervous. 


330  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Then  she  was  really  interested.  He  obeyed  with  a 
good  will :  "  Well — when  I  saw  them  going — after  they'd 
failed  to  get  me — from  having  been  just  about  scared  to 
death — so  scared  that  I  hardly  knew  I  was  working  the 
old  coffee-mill  for  all  it  was  worth — my  machine-gun, 
you  know — well,  it  came  across  me  that  it  was  a  terrific 
good  joke!  Those  two  Huns — all  helmets  and  goggles 
and  fancy  leather  clothes — standing  up  in  their  old  wreck 
— waving  their  arms  in  the  smoke  and  flame  from  their 
punctured  gas  tank — all  dressed  up,  you  know,  I  thought, 
in  the  flash  before  they  dropped  out  of  sight — '  All 
dressed  up,  and  no  place  to  go,'  I  said  to  myself,  '  except 
good  old  terra  firma — about  four  miles  straight  down ! ' 
And  I  laughed — good  God,  how  I  laughed!  I  suppose 
there  was  an  element  of  delirium  in  it — but  there  is  in  all 
hearty  laughter,  of  course." 

They  reached  the  little  brook,  babbling  to  itself  its  small 
immemorial  pleasantries,  and  turned  back  toward  the 
stile.  The  wide  brown  meadow  lay  in  a  faint  brown 
mist,  faintly  lighted  because  the  full  moon  was  but  half 
an  hour  below  the  horizon;  soon,  at  a  little  after  nine 
o'clock,  it  would  be  swinging  up  across  the  southeast, 
making  the  wide  peacefulness  of  the  valley  more  pro 
found,  as  it  had  on  the  night  of  Helen  Hope's  death. 

"  And  did  you  kill  many  Huns  all  together  ?  "  asked 
Clotilde,  in  a  voice  as  brown-velvety  as  the  silence. 

He  didn't  know  precisely  how  to  take  that.  "  Of 
course  it's  all  beastly,  cruel,  degrading,"  he  began;  evi 
dently  he  took  it  as  containing  a  large  admixture  of 
irony;  "but,  up  here  in  this  heavenly  peaceful  little 
hamlet — it's  just  the  place  I've  been  hungering  for,  too, 
just  the  precise  place — well,  I  think  you  don't  get  enough 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  331 

of  the  war  to  appreciate — its  very  volume.  You  know, 
if  anything's  big  enough — no  matter  what  it's  quality — 
and  you  get  thrown  into  it  head-first — well,  it  gets  you, 
unless  you're  a  lot  solider-based  than  I  am !  It  gets  you 
for  a  while,  anyway." 

"  Some  few  small  echoes  of  the  war  have  appeared 
even  in  Woodbridge,"  mentioned  Clotilde :  and  there  was 
certainly  irony  in  that.  "  It  gives  me  a  feeling  of  not 
being  altogether  a  pariah,  at  any  rate,  to  know  that  you 
have  killed  your  Huns.  Most  of  the  war-spirit  here 
abouts  is  pure  talk." 

He  got  her  perhaps  unconscious  claim  of  a  personal 
interest  in  his  deeds,  at  any  rate,  and  pressed  her  arm 
for  it. 

"  How  many  have  you  killed  ?  "  she  insisted,  dispas 
sionate  as  the  slow  drift  of  the  southwest  wind. 

"  Why — "  he  hesitated,  surmising  that,  at  least,  she 
was  not  actively  opposed  to  considering  him  an  un- 
Modernistic  murderer;  "not  many.  I  got  in  late,  when 
the  killing  wasn't  as  good  as  at  first — and  I  wasn't  much 
of  a  pilot,  anyway.  Too  old  for  one  thing.  My  twenty- 
seven  years  were  against  me — the  best  hunters  are  boys 
just  out  of  their  'teens.  You  see,  I'm  only  a  Corporal — 
after  nearly  four  months  of  it." 

"How  many?" 

He  admitted,  as  one  might  admit  a  regrettable  but 
unavoidable  accident:  "There  were  six  black  crosses  on 
the  old  boat  when  I  left  her.  You  know,  we  put  a  black 
cross  on  the  side  as  our  Wild  West  bad  men  used  to  put 
a  notch  on  the  butt  of  their  revolvers — meaning,  one 
more  down." 

There  was  no  doubt  about  the  regret  in  his  voice  as 


332  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

he  finished;  he  was  downright  melancholy,  wistful. 
"  When  a  new  man  got  her,  they  painted  out  the  crosses, 
of  course."  He  sighed,  sighed  with  a  catch  in  his  voice 
that  made  the  sigh  almost  a  groan,  for  those  painted-out 
crosses  on  the  old  boat,  for  the  getting  of  her  by  a  new 
man.  Clotilde,  pacing  slowly  by  his  side,  turned  to  look 
at  him,  at  the  profound  melancholy  of  his  drooping 
profile.  "Why  did  you  quit?"  she  asked. 

Her  level  voice  gave  him  no  new  suggestion;  he 
shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  For  the  same  reason  that  I 
shouldn't  be  talking  about  it — thinking  about  it — that  I 
ought  to  be  doing  something  else — making  love  to  you, 
by  preference ! "  He  became  increasingly  voluble,  and 
there  was  no  hint  of  love-making  in  his  bitterness.  "  I 
expected  to  lie  to  you  about  it — I  had  a  fine  line  of  good, 
solid  Modernistic  lies  all  made  up — expressly  to  please 
you,  you  know — to  make  it  easy  for  me  to  have  a  good, 
lively  Modernistic  affair  with  you — for,  after  your  cable, 
I  succeeded  in  convincing  myself  that  it  might  mean  an 
affair.  Unless  you  did  it  on  a  bet.  Or  when  you  were 
irresponsible  with  Greenwich  Village  cheer.  Or  in  order 
to  do  your  bit  in  spreading  desertion  among  the  poor 
deluded  fighting  men.  Say,  would  you  mind  telling  me 
why  you  did  send  that  cable  ?  " 

She  soothed  him  like  a  mother,  or  like  a  young  lady 
who  knew  a  great  deal  more  about  many  important 
matters  than  he  did :  "  Now,  Clem,  dear — don't  get 
excited;  if  I  owe  you  anything,  and  I  admit  a  debt,  I'll 
pay.  You  know,  I  merely  asked  you  why  you  quit — 
not  that  why  you  quit  makes  any  difference  to  me — that 
is,  any  great  difference.  Why  did  you?  " 

He  was  both  soothed,  and  disgusted.     "  I  don't  want 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  333 

to  collect  any  damned  debt;  I  came  back  hot-foot  to  do 
it,  but  now  I'm  damned  if  I  will ! — I  swear,  I  don't  know 
what's  got  into  me — into  us,  rather!  We  were  getting 
along  so  swimmingly — " 

"/do." 

"  You  what?" 

"  Know  what's  got  into  us." 

"  Well — I  think  I  know  the  Modernistic  patter  well 
enough  to  diagnose  your  diagnosis :  a  light  little  romance 
has  bumped  into  elemental  differences — " 

"  That  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  it." 

They  had  reached  the  stile  again;  Clotilde  wheeled 
them  around,  started  them  back  toward  the  brook.  The 
meadow  was  lightening  a  little;  a  saffron  flush  above  the 
blue-misty  ridges  to  the  southeast  presaged  moon-dawn. 
Corporal  Townes  took  no  notice  whatever  of  it,  but  Clo 
tilde  saw  it,  felt  it,  and  smiled.  "  If  you  had  a  little 
more  Modernism,  Clem,"  she  remarked  conversationally, 
"  instead  of  the  ordinary  male  smattering,  you'd  under 
stand  many  things  much  better  than  you  do.  You'd 
understand,  for  instance,  that  I  am  emotionally  and  intel 
lectually  in  love  with  you — which  is  only  a  more  definite 
way  of  saying  that  I'm  heels  over  head  in  love  with  you. 
Moreover,  and  quite  as  important,  I'm  beginning  to  make 
you,  not  lightly  and  debt-collectingly,  but  thoroughly,  in 
love  with  me." 

Corporal  Townes  stopped,  withdrew  his  arm  from 
hers,  stared  down  into  her  Quaker-calm  face  from  his 
good  two  inches  of  superior  height. 

"  Now  don't  let  that  dose  of  plain  truth  make  you  do 
anything  irrational,  abrupt — un-Modernistic !  "  she  cau 
tioned  him.  "  Everything  in  season !  " 


334  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Yes —  "  admitted  Corporal  Townes,  in  the  midst  of 
his  season  of  complete  confoundment. 

"  Then  don't  stand  there  gawking  as  if  something 
unusual  had  happened,"  Clotilde  ordered:  "at  least 
nothing  that  ought  to  seem  unusual  to  a  Modern  man. 
Or  to  any  other  kind  with  his  eyes  about  him !  Here — 
take  my  arm,  now,  you  goose,  and  let's  walk  on  and 
continue  our  conversation — about  Hun-killing." 

The  Corporal  obeyed  only  to  the  extent  of  taking  her 
arm  and  walking  on.  "  Clo' — you  queer  mixture — you 
Sphynx — "  he  was  beginning. 

"Of  course,  it's  largely  propinquity,"  said  Clotilde, 
also,  for  the  moment,  disregarding  the  interrupted  con 
versation  about  Hun-killing.  "  That,  and  your  appear 
ing  unexpectedly — and  forcing  me  to  admire  you  by 
seeming  to  be  so  everlastingly  admirable  to  Major  Park 
inson — and  your  long  voyage  just  to  see  me — yes,  I 
agree  with  you,  that  was  devotion!  It  showed  you 
wanted  me  pretty  badly — and  I  happened  to  be  in  a 
peculiarly  acute  state  of  wanting  to  be  wanted!  If  you 
hadn't  been  half  the  man  you  seem  to  be,  I'd  have  fallen 
in  love  with  you  just  the  same — and  you,  after  that 
stimulating  cable  and  long,  hard  trip — you  had  to  fall 
in  love  with  me,  a  little,  anyway,  if  I'd  been  as  unlov 
able  as  a  bale  of  hay!  You  see,  it's  all  as  simple  and 
inevitable — " 

"  Which  you're  not!  Oh,  you  stunning  little  Quak 
eress — "  Corporal  Townes,  in  spite  of  some  opposition 
at  his  left  flank,  was  executing  a  turning  movement  in 
tending  to  bring  him  face  to  face,  in  immediate  contact, 
with  the — not  with  the  enemy.  The  not-enemy  forced 
him  back  into  his  previous  position  with  sharp  pressure 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  335 

on  his  left  wing,  and  a  scattered  volley :  "  Now — please — 
not  yet — Clem,  I'm  too  full  of  ratiocination  to  want  to 
be  hugged  and  kissed  just  now — and  you  don't  want  to 
enough,  anyway!  " 

"  I  do — I  swear  I  never  wanted  anything  so  much!" 
complained  Corporal  Townes,  full  of  confused  hopes  and 
routed  purposes. 

"  Not  half  as  much  as  you  will  a  little  later — if  you'll 
just  consent  to  ratiocinate  for  the  present — till  I'm  ratio 
cinated  out ! " 

"  Maybe  you're  right — though  it  doesn't  seem 
possible !  " 

"  Well — you  take  my  word  for  it — because  I  know 
— dear.  There — you  are  an  angel  to  let  me  manage 
things — and  I'll  make  you  glad  you  did,  before  this  night 
Hoover.  You  see,  you  dear,  irresponsible  male — " 

"  Oh,  Clo'— Clo'— " 

"  Well,  you  are — see  Forel,  Chapter  Sixteen, — or 
wherever  it  is.  Now,  continuing  our  ratiocination,  what 
did  you  mean  by  saying  that  I  wasn't  simple  and 
inevitable?  " 

"  You  are — precisely — I  didn't  say  it !  " 

"  Yes,  you  did." 

"  At  least  my  opinions  are  my  own — I  didn't !  " 

"  But  you  did,  you  know.  When  I  was  explaining 
how  our  falling  so  suddenly  and  completely  in  love  was 
simple  and  inevitable,  you  said — '  Which  you  are  not ! ' 

"  Oh — that — I  was  referring  to  what  you'd  just  said — 
if  you  were  as  unlovable  as  a  bale  of  hay.  I  said, 
'  Which  you  are  not ' — plain  truth — only  not  put  strong 
enough ! " 

Clotilde   philosophized :    "  There   is   something   about 


336  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  plain  truth — about  frankness,  straightforwardness — 
dear — that  appealed  to  me  in  you,  Clem — and  that  comes 
of  your  return  to  youthfulness,  I  suppose.  It  was  just 
that — your  going  so  frankly  right  after  me — that  made 
me  let  you  kiss  me  on  the  cheek,  back  there,  when  I  was 
still  debating  whether  I'd  fight  down  all  my  instincts, 
wreck  my  nerves,  plunge  myself  into  a  slough  of  misery 
— by  denying  myself  to  you.  It's  singularly  sweet — just 
to  be  frank  with  each  other  about  love — about  everything 
— isn't  it?  I  know  I'd  be  perfectly  miserable  if  I  had 
to  pretend  that  I  didn't  love  you!  I  suppose,  according 
to  all  good  old  doctrine,  I  should  still  be  pretending  that 
I  don't?" 

"  Down  with  all  old  doctrine !  "  declaimed  the  vivified 
Corporal.  "  This  suits  me !  Think  how  miserable  I'd 
be  if  you  were  pretending!  "  He  waved  his  hand  at  the 
stars.  "  Oh,  for  my  old  boat — we'd  go  for  a  soar — my 
old  boat  with  her  two  brown  wings — and  two  hundred 
horse-power  in  her  steady  old  heart — Aunt  Lindy,  I  used 
-to  call  her,  Clo' — she  could  climb  a  mile  in  five  minutes 
— a  Nieuport  single-seated  fighter — Clo' — " 

"Yes,  dear!" 

"  I  guess  I'm  getting  weepy  about  her,  Clo' !  About 
her  and  about  the  old  coffee-mill  she  carried  on  her 
bonnet,  Clo' — the  gun,  you  know — " 

"  Yes,  dear." 

He  laughed  suddenly,  shrugged  his  shoulders:  "Well, 
I  can't  be  weepy  for  more  than  a  minute  about  anything 
with  you  around!  You're  the  best  thing  that's  ever 
happened  to  me — I  can  fairly  feel  my  damned  nerves 
steadying  up  already — and  I  feel  as  reckless  as  the  devil ! 
I  tell  you,  you  can't  appreciate  what  that  means  to  me 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  337 

— why,  I've  been  able  to  work  myself  up  into  a  first-class 
weep  any  time  in  the  last  six  weeks  just  thinking  about 
Aunt  Lindy!  Now — well,  she  was  a  good  boat,  but  the 
new  man  can  have  her.  They'll  give  me  a  new  one — and 
you  bet  I'll  see  that  my  six  crosses  are  on  her  side  before 
I  lift  her  off  the  ground !  " 

Clotilde  caught  her  breath  sharply :  "  You're  going — 
back?" 

He  turned,  stopped,  faced  her;  he  had  almost  for 
gotten  her,  the  very  look  of  her  seemed  to  startle  him. 
'  Yes — sorry  I  came  out  with  that  so  soon — though 
perhaps  it's  just  as  well,"  he  told  her.  "  I — forgive  me 
— I  didn't  think  that  we'd  really  fall  in  love  with  each 
other,  Clo'.  I  have — you  see — only  today  and  tomorrow. 
I  ship  day  after  tomorrow  morning — although,  of  course, 
"it's  against  all  regulations  for  me  to  tell  you  when  I  ship, 
and  I  hope  you'll  forget  it." 

They  had  stopped  near  the  little  brook;  it  babbled  its 
small  immemorial  pleasantries,  jests  and  quips  that  had 
to  do  with  the  spring,  under  a  rock-ledge,  from  which  it 
bubbled  into  daylight,  high  up  under  the  shoulder  of 
Teyce  Ten  Eyck;  shy  mention  it  made  of  the  mating 
irises  it  had  passed  in  the  watery  meadow  above  the 
Hooghtyling  farmhouse,  and  offered  a  few  complaints 
about  the  big  boulders  it  had  tumbled  over  as  it  passed 
a  hundred  yards  from  the  Brooks'  boarding  house.  It 
was  one  of  the  few  absolute  Woodbridgians ;  nothing 
outside  of  its  little  corner  of  Woodbridge  interested  it 
at  all. 

"  Clem,  dear—" 

"  Yes,  Clo'—" 

He  took  her  face  in  his  two  palms,  and  they  stood  look- 


338  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

ing  at  each  other  with  some  of  the  awe  and  wonder  and 
fear  and  great  glory  of  the  two  Huguenot  lovers  in  the 
old,  well-beloved  picture. 

A  broad  golden  sector  of  the  full  moon  thrust  suddenly 
above  the  southeastward  horizon,  and  shone  upon  them. 

"  I  really  think — I  really  love  you,"  she  whispered 
weakly,  and  he  kissed  her,  rather  as  a  battle-bound  knight 
might  kiss  some  holy  image  than  as  fervent  lover  his 
willing  mistress.  On  the  forehead  he  kissed  her,  and  on 
both  temples,  and  on  the  lips. 

A  little  while  later,  she  took  his  hands  from  her  face, 
and  holding  them  loosely  before  her  bosom,  turned  to 
look  at  the  moon-rise. 

'  The  moon's  coming  up,"  she  said. 

"  So  it  is,"  he  agreed. 

After  that  exchange  of  platitudes,  Clotilde  smiled  at 
the  Corporal  and  the  Corporal  smiled  platitudinously  back 
at  Clotilde. 

"  I  suppose  I'm  taking  it — at  least  I  began  taking  it— 
entirely  too  hard,"  said  the  girl,  while  the  Corporal  bent 
down  to  pick  up  the  lady's  London  military  trench  coat 
that  he  had  dropped  while  otherwise  engaged.  "  It's  such 
a  universal  experience,  most  of  it,  anyway — " 

"  It  isn't  at  all !  "  disagreed  the  Corporal. 

"  No — it  really  isn't,  is  it?  For  all  it's  happened,  and 
is  happening — " 

"  This  never  happened !  It's  unique  in  the  history  of 
the  world !  " 

"  Yes,  dear."  She  had  a  sudden  memory  of  Ethel, 
and  her  hennish  "  Yes,  Hen."  She  began  to  tell  him 
about  Ethel,  rinding  unusual  warmth  and  restfulness  in 
the  subject,  and  they  walked  back  toward  the  stile.  He 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  339 

chuckled  over  Ethel's  "  Yes,  Hen,"  and  was  quite  trans 
ported  by  Clotilde's  confession  that  she  knew  something 
of  how  Ethel  felt  when  she  said  it. 

"  But  isn't  that — that  hennish  feeling  quite  un- 
Modern  ?  "  suggested  the  Corporal.  "  It  is  not! "  Clo- 
tilde  informed  him.  "  It  is  a  recognized,  and  approved, 
feminine  instinct.  A  woman  who  doesn't,  on  occasion, 
feel  hennish  about  a  man  hasn't  found  her  mate — 
that's  all!" 

"  I'm  learning  a  great  deal  this  evening,"  surmised  the 
Corporal  politely. 

"  You  are — you're  doing  nicely,"  his  instructor  com 
plimented  him.  They  had  come  to  the  stile  again. 
"  Now  we're  going  for  a  walk — a  real  walk — this 
meadow  isn't  big  enough  for  us,"  she  advised  him 
further. 

;'  Yes,  dear,"  he  admitted,  in  a  very  good  imitation  of 
her  own  hennishness  of  the  moment  before,  and  asked : 
"  Now,  was  that  Modern  of  me?  I  admit  I  felt  quite 
subordinate  when  I  said  it." 

"  It  is  Modern,  absolutely,  for  you  to  feel  that  way, 
at  least  half  of  the  time — if  not  all  the  time  when  matters 
of  heart  interest  are  concerned.  You  are,  of  course,  a 
babe  in  arms — " 

"  Disproved — conditions  reversed !  "  proclaimed  the 
Corporal,  catching  her  up  as  she  started  to  cross  the 
stile,  carrying  her  over  it,  putting  her  down  and  saluting 
her  stiffly  on  the  other  side.  "  Beg  to  report  that  I've 
read,  in  some  regulations  for  romance,  that  stiles  were 
invented  to  carry  sweethearts  over;  beg  to  report  I've 
done  it !  " 

"I  liked  it — it  made  me  feel  warm  all  over!"  said 


340  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Clotilde,  nestling  up  against  him,  putting  his  arm  around 
her  waist  as  a  reward  for  regulations  properly  observed, 
even  to  the  immediate  relapse  of  the  still-a-bit-stand- 
offish  sweetheart  as  soon  as  the  stile  had  been  crossed. 
"  See — it  doesn't  scare  me,  now,  to  have  your  arm 
around  me." 

"  Scare  you — and  would  it  have  scared  you — before?  " 

"  Of  course,  you  goose — it  would  have  dangerously 
quickened  my  heart  action — I  might  have  been  over- 
stimulated  into  doing  something  quite  cool  and  unnatural 
— if  you'd  showed  less  natural  aptitude  for  education! 
Poor  girls,  poor  ladies — how  they  suffer  from  under- 
educated  males!  A  virgin,  dear — and  I  admit  I'm  glad 
I  am  one,  since  it  doesn't  argue  that  I'm  so  ignorant  as 
to  wreck  our  love  at  the  beginning  or  to  let  your  neces 
sary  and  natural  impulsiveness  wreck  it — But  we'll  soon 
be  imagining  we're  back  in  dear  old  Greenwich  Village. 
I'm  wondering  which  way  we'd  better  go?  " 

She  looked  down  toward  the  village,  with  the  white 
state  road  skirting  its  westward  edge,  to  the  grove  of 
ancient  pines,  full  of  meaning  for  her.  She  turned 
her  back  to  it,  looked  up  on  the  swelling  slope  of  Teyce 
Ten  Eyck,  now  flooded  with  moonlight,  its  bulky  sky- 
blot  softened  by  moonlit  mist,  its  continuing  ridges 
stretching  away  in  a  misty  endlessness  to  westward.  ""  I 
think  it's  the  mountain,"  she  decreed :  "  climbing  the 
mountain  will  be  a  little  like  soaring — even  if  a  poor 
substitute  for  a  soar  in  your  old  boat — dear,  I  didn't 
miss  that,  your  sudden  wish  to  take  me  soaring!  " 

'  You  didn't?  Well — it  just  came  over  me  like  a  flood 
that  I'd  like  to  soar  away  with  you — " 

"  Yes — and  it  was  a  most  true  and  natural  way  of 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  341 

showing  how  you  felt  about  me,  too.  I  can  hardly  get 
used  to  your  emotions,  Clem, — I  don't  believe  you  used 
to  own  one  spontaneous  emotion — at  least  I  never  knew 
you  to  express  one.  Your  way  of  making  love,  in  par 
ticular,  might  have  come  out  of  a  Greenwich  Village  card 
catalog !  I  suppose  you  needed  to  be  de-civilized,  a  little, 
— and  the  war's  done  it." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  he  agreed,  with  half  an  eye  for  other 
matters.  "  I  say — do  you  think  it  would  scare  you  now 
— cause  you  to  do  anything  downright  unnatural  and 
cool — if  I  just — put  my  arm  around  you  while  we 
walked?" 

"It  would  not— I'd  like  it!" 

"  Well — it's  quite  heavenly  that  you  do !  "  He  slipped 
his  right  arm,  with  exaggerated  delicacy,  around  her 
waist,  took  her  overcrowded  left  hand  in  his.  "  I  don't 
want  to  make  you  do  anything  unnatural — I  adore  your 
— perfect  naturalness !  "  he  breathed,  with  tremendous 
appreciation,  and  yet  a  touch  of  humor,  too. 

"  It  really  isn't  foolish — it's  quite  fundamental,  dear," 
she  told  him.  "  It  will  make  all  the  difference  in  the 
world,  how  you  make  love  to  me  will,  you  know.  I  want 
to  be  made  love  to — so  that  I  can  love  you  fully — that's 
all.  I  don't  want  my  love  for  you  to  be  just  a  cheap 
case  of  feminine  surrender — for  a  girl's  first  complete 
love  is  a  surrender,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  just  a  yielding 
to  cheap,  superior,  brute  force — not,  as  it  should  be,  a 
more  than  willing  gift." 

"  German  Kultur,"  muttered  the  Corporal  thought 
fully,  "  applied  to  the  domestic  relations." 

:'  The  Germans  are  the  most  backward  race  in  Europe 
— in  nearly  every  way,"  conceded  Clotilde.  "  If  it's 


342  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

really  necessary  to  kill  anybody,  I'm  glad  your  business 
is  to  kill  them." 

The  Corporal  asserted :  "  Oh,  it's  necessary  to  kill  them 
all  right — the  most  necessary  business  in  the  world 
today." 

"  Well — you  may  be  right." 

"  Look  here — I  expected  to  have  a  high  old  time  with 
you  along  Militaristic-Pacifistic  lines — unless  I  concealed 
my  basic  Militarism  under  a  lot  of  glib  lies — " 

"  Oh,  I'm  reconciled  to  the  slaughter  of  a  few  Germans 
— especially  since  you  make  the  point  that  they  apply 
their  form  of  brute-force  Kultur  to  the  domestic  relations 
— as  they  undoubtedly  do.  I'd  never  thought  of  that 
argument.  All  good  Modernists  ought  to  begin  to  hate 
the  Germans  forthwith — that  argument  ought  to  be 
treated  at  length — in  '  The  Masses '  and  '  The  Seven 
Arts/  at  least.  Really,  they  have  a  number  of  prom 
inent  contribs.  who  ought  to  glory  in  it — starting,  as  it 
does,  with  female  virginity !  " 

"  Yes — that  ought  to  get  them  going,"  admitted  the 
Corporal.  He  added :  "  It's  been  longer  than  I  thought 
since  I  was  in  Greenwich  Village ;  I  daresay  it  could  give 
me  shocks." 

"  It  is  rather  more  shocking  than  of  yore,"  said  Clo- 
tilde.  "  The  war's  been  bad  for  it,  I'm  afraid — every 
body's  thinking  about  that  brutality  over  there,  with  the 
result  that  the  dancing,  free-loving  element  have  things 
pretty  much  their  own  way.  I'm  sorry — for  I  always 
liked  the  old  Village — and  it  really  wasn't  so  shocking 
in  the  old  days — except,  perhaps,  in  its  frankness.  You 
could  hear  of  more  impropriety,  and  see  less  of  it,  there, 
than  in  most  communities.  It's  done  a  lot  for  me,  bless 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  343 

its  unconventional,  romantic,  dramatic,  very  young,  and 
appallingly  honest  heart !  It  was  like  a  boarding  school 
of  the  Applied  Humanities :  every  young  thing,  especially 
every  girl,  ought  to  have  attended  for  a  season  or  two. 
Of  course  many  irresponsible  young  males — such  as 
yourself — considered  it  merely  a  good  hunting  ground. 
Which  was  very  good  for  the  girl  students — as  long  as 
they  didn't  lose  their  heads." 

The  Corporal  asked,  after  some  moments  of  silent 
consideration,  "  do',  did  you  always  talk  as  frank 
common  sense  as  you've  been  talking  this  evening?  Or 
is  it  only  that  I'm  in  a  proper  frame  of  mind  to  appre 
ciate  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I'm  a  graduate  of  the  Village  Seminary,  now 
— and  I've  been  taking  a  little  P.  G.  course  in  Wood- 
bridge;  I  suppose,  too,  you  are  in  a  particularly  receptive 
frame  of  mind."  She  raised  her  eyebrows  at  him.  "  I 
daresay  my  attitude  toward  killing  Germans,  attained 
after  much  soul-searching  and  absorption  of  Woodbridge 
treaties  on  emotional  reactions  to  Hun-hunting,  has  won 
me  a  high  place  in  your  estimation.  Well — I  really  don't 
mind  your  killing  as  many  as  you  can — I  only  wish  you 
didn't  have  to  begin  again  so  soon ! " 

"  Lord — and  don't  I !  But,  in  view  of  my  short  time 
here — and  considering  the  discreet  surroundings — " 
They  had  come  to  the  turn  in  the  road,  a  little  way 
below  the  Brooks'  lower  meadow,  the  identical  turn 
where  a  blackberry  briar  had  so  disturbed  Skeeter 
— and  Clotilde,  too.  The  Corporal  explained  what  he 
was  getting  at  by  gently  stopping  their  progress  and 
kissing  her  gently  on  the  nearest  cheek.  She  put  up  her 
mouth  to  kiss  him  back.  "  Your  kisses  are  wonderfully 


344  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

sweet  to  me,  dear,"  she  told  him,  which  made  him  quite 
prodigal  of  them  on  her  hair,  her  forehead,  her  eyes,  her 
nose,  her  chin,  even  the  little  dimple  at  the  base  of  her 
throat;  but  they  were  all  discreet  kisses,  cool  and  soft, 
such  as  a  maiden  very  much  in  love,  but  still  far  from 
being  wholly  won,  deserved.  He  kissed  her  hand,  as 
they  walked  on,  wonderfully  uplifted  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  inner  and  outer  peace,  and  she  lifted  his  hand  and 
held  it  against  her  cheek. 

"  If  I'd  only  got  your  cable  sooner ! "  he  said,  touching 
the  warm  smoothness  of  her  cheek  and  throat  with  love- 
sensitized  finger-tips.  "  You  see,  I'd  gone  to  Naples, 
dear,  nearly  a  month  before — to  try  and  come  back.  I 
was  all  in — I  had  the  trouble  that  war-flyers,  especially 
the  older  ones,  are  so  prone  to — something  like  a  psycho 
logical  revulsion  against  flying — something  deeper  than 
their  wills.  About  four  months  usually  knocks  out  all 
but  the  best  and  youngest  of  them — I  lasted  four  months, 
anyway!  And  I  didn't  go  to  pieces  everlastingly — as  a 
good  many  of  them  do.  In  fact — if  a  visiting  officer 
hadn't  caught  me — just  as  I  was  preparing  to  go  up — 
hadn't  recognized  the  symptoms — I  might  have  lasted  a 
few  weeks  longer.  Not  that  it  wasn't  better  for  me  to 
be  sent  off  when  I  was — gave  me  a  better  chance  to  come 
back,  I  mean." 

She  asked :  "  What  were  the  symptoms — he  saw — 
dear?" 

"  Well — frankly — acute  nausea.  I  sat  there  retching 
like  a  sick  pup  while  they  were  starting  my  engine.  I 
suppose  all  air  work  is  done  in  a  sort  of  over-stimulated 
condition — it  has  to  be — and,  after  a  time  of  it,  some 
thing  breaks.  I  was  quite  accurate  when  I  told  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  345 

Major,  this  afternoon,  that  I'd  been  wounded  in  my 
finer  feelings." 

"  And  now — you  think  you're  ready  to  go  back?  " 

"  I  hope  I  shall  be.  Thanks  largely  to  you.  You  see, 
the  cure  is  just  getting  your  mind  off  the  war — resting 
— putting  your  mind  and  body  to  other  uses — a  good  deal 
of  drinking,  of  women,  of  physical  exercise,  and  of  solid 
food  are  commonly  considered  essentials.  Well — I  was 
taking  the  cure  in  Naples — without,  as  I've  told  you,  very 
good  results. — You  didn't  get  my  cable,  telling  you  I  was 
coming?  " 

"  No."  She  was  subdued;  without  seeming  to  make  a 
point  of  it,  she  so  turned  to  glance  up  the  hillside  beside 
her  that  he  would  have  had  to  use  force  to  keep  his  arm 
around  her  waist.  She  released  his  hand  at  the  same 
time,  and  a  little  gap  widened  between  them. 

He  put  both  his  discarded  hands  into  his  pockets.  "  I 
think  I  know  why  you  didn't  get  my  cable — as  well  as 
why  you  don't  seem  to  need  my  hands,  and  my  arm,  any 
longer,"  he  told  her;  he  was  not  particularly  cast  down, 
his  voice  said,  he  was  ready  to  accept  the  consequences 
of  unfortunate  facts,  and  be  glad  they  were  no  worse. 
"  The  same  explanation  goes  for  both,  probably.  I  mean, 
I  received  your  cable,  and  wrote  an  answer  to  it,  while 
I  was  quite  drunk,  drunk  at  least  to  the  prescribed  point 
of  utter  relaxation — and,  quite  possibly,  the  woman  who 
was  with  me,  and  managed  to  see  both  your  cable  and 
my  answer,  got  my  answer  from  the  waiter  by  whom  I 
sent  it  to  the  nearest  telegraph  office.  She  left  me,  and 
was  gone  some  little  time,  after  I'd  sent  the  man  out 
with  the  message — using  her  as  my  interpreter..  I  sup 
pose  she  bribed  the  waiter — and  tore  up  my  message.  I 


346  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

thought  of  that,  afterward,  when  I  was  on  shipboard." 

"You  were  in  a  cafe?"  asked  Clotilde. 

"  Yes."  Both  question  and  answer  were  highly  un 
emotional.  He  began,  with  some  warmth :  "  I  suppose 
I  ought  to  crawl  about  this,  Go' — but  it  simply  isn't  in 
me  to  crawl — very  much;  and  you're  Modern  enough  to 
understand  about — some  things.  I  was  really  fond  of 
the  girl — and  her  love  made  me  more  of  a  man,  less  of 
a  floppy-stomached  chicken — " 

"Her  love?" 

"  Well,  yes — it  was  love — not  of  a  high  order  perhaps, 
and  yet  I  won't  lie  about  it — it  was,  essentially,  love. 
She  was  a  very  nice  girl.  The  war  had  so  wrecked  her 
father's  business — he  was  the  owner  of  a  shoe-store 
dealing  in  American  shoes, — that  she  calmly  set  out  to 
capture  an  invalided  soldier  with  money,  and  she  lit 
upon  me.  I  was  glad  she  did;  I  needed  her  as  part  of 
the  recognized  cure  for  funk.  She  made  the  payment 
of  a  good  round  sum  her  first  stipulation;  but  after  that 
we  got  on  a  more  human  basis.  I  seriously  considered 
marrying  her,  or  at  least  bringing  her  back  to  New  York 
with  me.  But  your  cable  wrecked  that.  She  couldn't 
hold  a  candle  to  you,  of  course — that's  a  plain  fact — I 
see  we're  dealing  in  plain  facts  now — and  not  a  com 
pliment.  I  saw  that  any  even  semi-permanent  relation 
with  her  wasn't  possible — and  set  out  on  the  wild  goose 
chase  that  landed  me  here  this  afternoon.  By  the  way, 
now  is  as  good  a  time  as  any  for  you  to  tell  me  why 
you  sent  that  masterly  cable — for  it  was  something  of  a 
masterpiece — that  simple,  '  Come.  Clotilde.'  Surely 
you  didn't  expect  we'd  fall,  really,  in  love  with  each 
other?"' 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  347 

"  As  much  as  you  may  be  surprised  to  hear  it — I 
really  did." 

"  Well — you  never  showed  any  signs  of  it." 

"  I  wasn't  ready — and  you  were  a  good  deal  less 
ready." 

"  I  see,"  he  said;  and,  after  that,  neither  of  them  said 
anything,  nor  looked  at  anything  but  the  moonlit  brown 
road  before  them,  for  some  minutes.  They  had  passed 
below  the  wide,  terraced  lawn  of  the  Brooks'  boarding 
house,  passed  the  array  of  big  white  barns  and  outbuild 
ings  beyond,  and  entered  the  half-mile  zigzag  of  steep, 
tree-shaded  road  that  led  up  to  the  Hooghtylings'.  It 
was  an  accepted  Lovers'  Lane  for  lovers  equal  to  a  stiff 
climb,  but  there  was  no  loverly  suggestion  about  the  two 
who  now  strolled,  side  by  side  at  a  lateral  distance  of  five 
'feet,  slowly  up  its  moon-checkered  solitude. 

"Look  here,  Clo',"  said  the  Corporal;  "if  I'd  come 
back  to  find  that  you — you  had  had  an  affair — I  mean  a 
real  limit  affair — and  had  got  over  it  as  thoroughly  as  I 
have  over  mine — that  you  loved  me,  in  spite  of  it — yes, 
and  because  of  it,  for  little  loves  are  the  only  measures 
we  have  for  great  ones — well,  I  shouldn't  deeply  mind. 
I  tell  you,  I've  looked  pretty  deep  into  myself — and  I 
believe  that's  the  truth." 

"  Well,  /  don't  believe  it,  Clem."  It  was  not  a  harsh 
denial,  but  quite  final. 

"  No — you  wouldn't — because  you  haven't  been 
through  any  shallow  affair.  Your  knowledge  of  Love, 
Clo',  when  all  is  said  and  done,  is  largely  theoretical. 
You  wouldn't  admit  that  an  affair  that  had  all  the 
physical  earmarks  of  love  might  no  more  than  scratch 
the  surface — " 


348  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  No,  I  wouldn't — because  I  know  it  isn't  true.  I 
suppose  I — I  wanted  as  much  from  you  as  I  have  to 
give  you,  Clem — egotistical  as  that  sounds,  dear, — and, 
of  course,  I  had  no  earthly  reason  to  expect  it — I  suppose 
I  should  be  satisfied, — yes — considering  that  I  believe 
every  word  you  say — "  She  came  across  the  road  to 
him  and  put  her  hand  in  the  crook  of  his  arm.  " — just 
as  every  fool  woman  a  lot  in  love  is  bound  to  believe 
what  her  lover  tells  her — no,  I  don't  mean  that — " 

"  I  don't  believe,"  he  interrupted  chokily,  "  Go',  I've 
told  you  one  word  that  wasn't  the  exact  truth,  since  I 
met  you  there  at  the  stile." 

She  got  his  nerveless  right  hand  out  of  his  pocket  by 
tugging  at  his  arm,  and  encircled  it  with  her  warm  little 
palm  and  fingers.  "  There — I  was  just  going  to  say 
that  I  ought  to  be  more  than  satisfied — and  I  am, 
dear!" 

"  Well,  I'm  not."  He  removed  his  hand  and  thrust 
it  back  into  his  pocket.  "  I'm  sorry — the  kinder  you  are 
to  me,  the  more  miserable  I  feel.  I  got  a  downright 
stinging  pain,  just  then,  just  from  the  feel  of  your 
wonderful  little  hand.  I  guess  I  am  crawling,  after  all, 
ain't  I?  Well,  I  am — I  crawl — all  over!  I'm  sorry — < 
and  that's  the  bitter  truth. — No,  please,  dearest  girl,  don't 
try  to  take  my  hand  again — just  yet." 

"  Well — it  does  me  good  to  see  you  crawl — but  I'd  like 
to  hold  your  hand  while  you're  doing  it ! " 

"  Not  just  yet — I  prefer  to  crawl  unaided.  Dammit, 
I'm  actually  wishing  I  had  remained — I  were — a — I 
never  imagined  I'd  ever — " 

"A  male  virgin — at  twenty-seven  years  old,  Clem?" 
Her  voice  tinkled  with  sudden  unsuppressible  amuse- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  349 

ment.  "  I  wonder  if  I  could  love  you  as  I  do — if  you 
were,  Clem — I  really  wonder !  " 

"  Well — weren't  you  just — "  He  was  thoroughly 
mazed. 

"  You're  an  awful  lot  in  love,  man — you're  almost  as 
deep  in  love  as  I  am !  "  she  told  him,  and  again  her  voice 
tinkled.  "  Who  would  have  imagined  that  it  was  in 
you?  I  think  no  other  girl  was  ever  blessed  with  so 
completely  delightful  a  lover ! " 

"  But,  Clo',  I'm  serious — don't  you  really  care  that  I 
have — that  I'm  not — " 

"  Don't  I  care?  Listen  to  him!  I  care,  dear,  so  that 
it  almost  broke  my  heart,  so  that  my  very  knees  almost 
collapsed  under  me — when  you  were  telling  me  about 
that  other  poor  girl.  But  it's  all  such  an  awful  mess — 
-until  things  change  so  radically — until  men  learn  more — 
yes,  and  until  girls  learn  more,  too — Oh,  Clem,  it's  such 
a  frightful  mess  that  I'm  nearly  mad  with  joy  to  find 
that  you've  been  able  to  bring  me  a  love  out  of  all  the 
mess — a  love  as  big  and  pure  and  true — as  I  think  you 
have,  Clem !  And  now — '  She  barred  his  way,  putting 
up  her  arms :  "  I  think  it's  time  for  you  to  kiss  me  some 
more,  Clem — and  hold  me  close  to  you,  dear !  " 

He  kissed  her  many  times,  and  held  her  close  to  him, 
all  her  silken-gowned,  slender  beauty,  interrupting  him 
self  to  sniff  and,  quite  mawkishly,  got  out  a  handker 
chief  wherewith  to  dab  at  his  eyes.  While  he  dabbed, 
he  gawked  down  at  her,  holding  her  close  with  one  arm, 
so  completely  unmanned  that  he  didn't  know  that  he  was 
dabbing,  that  there  was  something  suspiciously  like  a  tear 
on  the  end  of  his  long  nose.  Nor  did  she  notice  it,  at 
least  she  saw  it  in  no  normal  prospective  if  she  did.  For 


350  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

a  good  minute  they  lived  on  the  crest  of  the  greatest 
wave  of  emotion  that  had  lifted  them  since  they  had 
laughed  together  in  that  first  lively  ripple  at  the  stile. 
They  had  sailed  far  out  since  then;  immensities  of  sea 
and  sky  were  around  them.  In  the  midst  of  ancient, 
familiar,  and  everlastingly  mighty  and  awesome  forces, 
with  world-end  winds  whitening  the  rollers  around  them, 
it  was  small  wonder  that  every  sign  of  a  leak  in  their 
frail  craft,  even  a  little  natural  creaking  and  groaning  of 
the  rigging,  sent  their  hearts  into  their  mouths,  sent  them 
into  each  other's  arms  with  something  like  the  fear  of 
death  in  their  eyes.  They  had  never  taken  that  voyage 
before,  course  and  ship,  even  themselves,  each  to  the 
other,  were  a  little  strange,  untried.  It  is  the  prerogative 
only  of  well-traveled  mariners  to  scoff. 

Then  the  wave  passed,  leaving  them  in  the  great 
trough  that  followed  it,  rather  snugly  shut  in  together, 
with  only  little  ripples  catching  the  moonlight  all  around. 
So  they  ventured  to  smile  a  little  at  their  recent  emotion. 

"  At  least,  I  shan't  feel  jealous  of  Aunt  Lindy  any 
more,"  Clotilde  confided  to  him,  setting  their  course 
onward  and  upward,  holding  his  arm  and  hand  close 
against  the  playing  muscles  of  her  lithe  side:  "/  can 
make  you  weepy,  too!  " 

He  explained:  "  Oh,  the  old  boat  was  only  my  Aunt; 
you're  a  thousand  times  more.  You  can  not  only  make 
me  weep :  you  can  make  me  commit  suicide — or  jump 
through  a  hoop — anything." 

"  I  wish  I  could  give  you  as  much  joy  as  getting  back 
to  her — or  to  another  like  her — will." 

"  But  you  can,  you  do — a  thousand  times  more !  " 

"  Now,  go  slow.     You  know  that  isn't  true." 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  35 1 

Even  the  wave-trough,  it  appeared,  showed  some  tur 
bulent  spots. 

"  It  is  true.  My  joy  in  the  idea  of  returning  to  my 
dear  relative,  and  my  joy  in  being  with  you,  are  quite 
different— and  the  joy  of  being  with  you  is  at  least  a 
thousand  times  greater." 

"What  nonsense!  If  I  asked  you  not  to  return  to 
that  dangerous  relative — she  may  break  your  dear  neck 
any  day,  you  know,  even  if  she  doesn't  get  you  shot  or 
exploded,  or  something  like  that — but  if  I  asked  you  just 
to  stay  with  me,  and  let  someone  else  risk  his  life  with 
her — would  you  ?  " 

"  Uh — well — that  isn't  a  fair  question.     You  see — " 

"  There.  My  point's  proved.  Not  that  I'm  particu 
larly  interested  in  it,  for  I'm  not  going  to  ask  you.  I 
"suppose  I'm  frivolous — I  feel  rather  frivolous.  I'm 
having  such  a  thoroughly  good  time!  The  very  best  I 
ever  had — or  expect  to  have — until  you  come  back  from 
killing  Huns.  I  must  make  the  most  of  it.  If  you  don't 
mind,  I'd  like  to  kiss  you  on  the  nose.  You  have  too 
large  a  nose  for  your  face,  but  I  rather  like  it.  Because 
it's  yours,  of  course.  Utterly  irrational!  Yes,  I  mean 
it — put  your  nose  down  here !  " 

He  put  his  nose  down  there. 

"  Did  that  other  girl — that  poor  Italian  girl  you  left 
when  you  got  my  message — did  she  like  your  nose,  too  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  that  she  ever  mentioned  it. — I'd  rather 
not  talk  about  her,  dear." 

She  answered,  with  some  determination :  "  Well,  Clem 
—I  only  want  to  say  one  more  thing  about  her,  and  then 
I'll  not  mention  her  again.  I'm  glad  the  memory  of  her 
hurts  you  a  little — it  ought  to.  I  was  only  going  to  say, 


352  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

dear,  that  I  pity  her  so!  It  wasn't  fair — it  was  cruel; 
and,  when  you,  were  talking  so  in  your  character  of 
irresponsible  male,  of  '  actually '  thinking  of  marrying 
her — of  realizing  that  even  a  semi-permanent  relation 
with  her  wasn't  possible — Oh,  Clem,  I  pitied  her — and  I 
pitied  you,  too." 

He  fumbled  for  her  meaning :  "  Of  course — I  pitied 
her—" 

"  And  weren't  you  pitiable,  too  ?  Isn't  it  rather  pitiable 
that  you  cheapened  love — or  haven't  you  really  reached 
the  place  where  you  don't  want  love — our  love — to  be 
cheap  ?  " 

"  Yes.  I  understand  you  now.  I've  already  crawled 
for  that !  "  The  Corporal  was  inclined  to  bitterness. 

"  Perhaps  it's  unfair  of  me  to  bring  it  up  again,  but 
I  wouldn't  be  Modern,  I  wouldn't  be  true  to  my  Green 
wich  Village  training — " 

"  Oh,  damn  Greenwich  Village !  " 

"  No,  let's  not.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  Greenwich 
Village,  I  wouldn't  have  had  the  intelligence  to  send  you 
that  cable,  nor  to — Oh,  many  important  matters,  past, 
present,  and  future,  might  be  quite  impossible  if  it  hadn't 
been  for  the  dear  old  foolish  Village.  Don't  you  know 
that?" 

"  All  right — three  cheers  for  the  Village !  In  some 
ways  you  remind  me  of  a  steam  roller,  Clo'.  I'm  sorry 
I  said  anything.  Have  you  any  further  catechism  for 
me  ? "  He  was  quite  humble,  if  a  trifle  bitter,  as  a 
somewhat  flattened-out  young  man  had  a  right  to  be. 

"  Yes — I  have  one  more  question — a  most  serious 
one." 

The  Corporal  braced  himself :  "  Well— shoot!  " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  353 

"  Don't  you — still  love  me,  Clem?  " 

The  Corporal  enthusiastically  welcomed  the  sugar 
plum. 

"  Clo' — you — you  globule  of  quicksilver — but  yes,  yes 
a  thousand  times — it's  only — only,  you  know — that  we 
seemed  to  be  getting  mixed  up  with  sordidnesses — " 

"  Well,  then,  let's  forget  the  '  onlies ' — I  don't  think 
there  are  going  to  be  any  more  of  them,  now:  I  think 
you  might — just  show — by  your  actions — " 

The  Corporal,  given  a  hint  in  the  proper  direction  by 
discovering  the  lady's  arms  around  his  neck,  showed  by 
his  actions.  "  Maybe,  dear,"  she  philosophized  con 
tentedly  with  her  head  in  the  hollow  of  his  shoulder  while 
he  kissed  and  stroked  her  hair,  "  maybe  it  makes  love 
richer — the  presence  of  a  few  sordidnesses  does,  you 
-know — more  human,  I  mean, — not  such  a  bright  ethereal 
perfection  as  becomes  a  little  insipid.  I  wonder  if  the 
perfect  young  men  and  maidens  of  a  thousand  years  from 
now  will  love  as  deeply,  and  richly,  as  we  poor  erring 
creatures  can?  It's  a  hard  problem,  isn't  it — always  to 
be  striving  at  perfection,  some  Dantesque  Heaven,  and 
wondering  if  we  wouldn't  be  sick  of  it  as  soon  as  we 
got  it?  Maybe  I  couldn't  love  you  as  well,  if  you  hadn't 
been  so  wicked — just  now,  I'm  almost  sure  I  couldn't. 
— Honestly,  Clem,  wouldn't  you  love  me  better  if  I'd 
fallen — at  least  once  ?  " 

"  Seriously,  that's  a  problem,"  he  admitted.  "  I  don't 
think  I  would — because  I  don't  think  it's  in  me  to  love 
you  more  than  I  do." 

"  But  if  I  only  had  some  affair  to  confess,"  she  per 
sisted,  "  some  affair  striking  no  deeper  into  the  real 
me  than  your  affair  with  the  Italian  girl  did  into  you 


354  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

— mightn't  that  tap  some  unsuspected  reserve  of  loving 
in  you — stir  up  jealousies,  passions,  that,  in  their  re 
action,  would  make  you  love  me  more?  " 

"  I  suppose  I  should  be  expected  to  swear  that  it 
wouldn't — but  the  plain  truth  impels  me  to  say  that  I 
don't  know !  " 

"  Suppose  I'd  fallen  to  the  spell  of  a  nymph-and-faun 
passion — right  up  on  one  of  the  hills  near  here — with  a 
fresh,  faun-like  country-boy, — faun-like  to  the  extent  of 
smelling  of  the  stables  a  little — for  he  did  smell  of  the 
stables,  a  little — although  it  would  be  more  proper  if 
he'd  smelled  of  the  sheep  he  helped  the  Arcadian  shep 
herds  tend,  I  suppose — and  suppose  he'd  been  so  com 
pletely  and  naively  captivated  by  an  accidental  sight  of 
my — my  legs,  to  be  exact — pretty  far  up — as  he  was — 
that  I,  yielding  to  purely  physical  instincts — " 

"  Thunder  and  Mars !  Hell  and  damnation !  Clo' — 
Clo'— you— " 

"  Why,  you're  taking  it  far  worse  than  I  took  your 
casual  admission  about  the  Italian  girl — and  yet  I  don't 
see  that  it's  any  worse. — I  don't  suppose  you  know  you're 
hurting  my  arms — squeezing  them  both  until  they'll  be 
black  and  blue  for  days?  " 

"  I'd  like  to  hurt  more  than  your  arms !  "  Neverthe 
less  the  Corporal  released  them :  he  had  been  holding  her 
before  him,  gripping  her  two  arms  near  the  shoulders  as 
if  they  had  been  handles,  gripping  them  as  he  had  never 
gripped  even  the  levers  of  Aunt  Lindy  except  in  a  very 
squally  wind.  They  stood  staring  at  each  other,  missing 
no  fineness  of  expression,  thanks  to  the  moon  and  the 
half-stripped  branches  of  the  overspreading  trees.  Clo- 
tilde  was  as  demure  as  any  Quaker  maiden  confessing 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  355 

a  fondness  for  worldly  cake;  as  for  the  Corporal,  he  was 
such  a  mixture  of  fierceness,  doubt,  jealousy,  tenderness, 
wild  suspicions  as  to  make  the  contortions  of  his  coun 
tenance  a  fit  model  for  the  fighting  face  of  an  old  Jap 
anese  warrior.  Said  Clotilde,  gently  rubbing  each  bruised 
arm  with  the  opposite  hand :  "  I  thought  you  might  have 
some — reserves." 

She  swayed  a  little  toward  him  as  she  said  it,  either 
by  accident  or  as  a  slight  hint.  The  Corporal  caught  her 
to  him,  not  gently,  and  turned  her  face  up  so  that  he 
could  look  down  into  it,  gripping  her  unresisting  little 
chin  between  the  thumb  and  forefinger  of  his  right  hand. 
"  Clo' — you  demon — God ! — you  didn't,  Clo' — " 

"  Oh,  no — I  didn't."  She  spoke  with  some  difficulty 
because  of  an  immovable  lower  jaw.  "  It  might  be  more 
stimulating  to  pretend  that  I  did  for  a  while,  but  I  believe 
in  the  plain  truth — even  if  the  truth  is  often  pretty  flat. 
I  sent  him  away — and  was  quite  miserable  with  missing 
him  for  some  time  afterward.  You  see,  I  didn't  want 
to  cheapen  love." 

"  But,  Clo'—  He  glowered  down  at  her.  He  was 
quite  tigerish,  still;  she  lifted  her  eyebrows,  smiled  at 
him,  provoking  him.  With  many  tinkles  as  of  little 
silver  bells  in  her  voice  she  said :  "  Why,  the  poor  little 
flat  truth  seems  quite  stimulating,  doesn't  it — I  dare  say 
you're  so  wrought  up  because  I  admit  I  missed  him — 
wanted  him — perhaps  because  he  saw  my — under  the 
circumstances,  I  think  I'd  better  be  cautious — my  nether 
limbs — quite  a  lot  of  them,  I  am  afraid — "  He  kissed 
her  suddenly,  hard,  and  drew  back  his  head  to  see  how 
she  would  take  it;  she  gasped  a  little,  her  eyelids  flut 
tered;  then  she  lifted  her  pursed  lips.  He  kissed  her 


356  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

again,  not  so  hard  nor  yet  so  briefly,  for  there  was  no 
need  for  him  to  look  at  her  to  see  how  she  was  taking 
it.  Her  quivering  lips,  her  whole  quivering  body,  told 
him  that.  Another  great  smooth  roller  of  emotion  lifted 
them,  carried  them  into  high,  silent  regions  of  awe, 
wonder,  ecstasy.  They  stood  so,  seeming  almost  one 
flesh,  without  division  in  body  or  spirit,  lips  answering 
lips,  eyes  answering  eyes,  for  seconds  that  evolved  into 
minutes,  nor  was  there  any  fear  on  all  of  Clotilde's 
enraptured  white  face. 

"  I'm  sure,"  she  said,  as  the  wave  slowly  passed, 
cradling  them  gently  into  a  new  space  of  greater  calm 
and  peacefulness  than  they  had  yet  found,  "  that  this 
is  the  more  proper  because  I'm  within  calling  distance  of 
my  father — he  lives  right  around  that  bend,  you  know. 
— I  may  consider  myself  properly  chaperoned." 

He  didn't  know  about  that ;  he  had  only  the  veiled  and 
delicate  hints  dropped  by  Ethel,  whose  regard  for  the 
proprieties  he  had  not  pushed  too  far.  Clotilde  told  him 
the  story  as  they  walked  up  toward  the  darkened  Hoogh- 
tyling  farmhouse,  with  its  weather-silvered  outbuildings 
just  across  the  road,  all  glistening  in  the  steady  moon 
light. 

The  Corporal  neither  enthused  over  the  subject  as  Mr. 
Beemis  had  done,  nor  became  excited  about  it  after  the 
manner  of  Edna.  "  I  don't  suppose  it  really  makes  much 
difference,  does  it?  "  he  suggested.  "  You  wouldn't  say 
that  if  you  knew  that  sensible  old  farmer ! "  returned 
Clotilde. 

"  Why,"  she  went  on,  "  Clem,  just  by  using  his  head, 
his  solid  old  Dutch  antipathy  against  being  forced  into 
either  actions  or  beliefs — he's  become  about  as  thorough 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  357 

a  Modernist  as  I  ever  knew !  It  was  his  statement  of  a 
chief  Modernist  position  on  the  war  that — that  rather 
opened  my  eyes.  '  Don't  pay  to  mix  in  rights  goin'  on  in 
t'other  end  of  the  village,'  he  said.  Now  what  better, 
more  concise — " 

"What  rot!"  The  Corporal  was  aroused.  "What 
do  we  keep  police  for,  if  not  to  mix  in  fights  at  t'other 
end  of  the  village — before  they  get  to  us?  We  mix  in 
'em,  all  right — by  proxy — and  that's  what  we'll  do  in 
Europe  after — " 

"  Clem,  dear — "  Her  voice  was  a  little  mocking, 
accusing  him  of  excitement  over  platitudes.  " — I  only 
put  that  forth  as  a  concise  and  punchy  statement  of 
Modernistic  belief,  by  way  of  introducing  you  to  my 
admirable  father!  He's  Modernistic  in  other  ways,  too 
— :ways  that  might  meet  even  your  approbation,  as  they 
met  mine.  Why,  do  you  know,  he  took  in  all  my  Mod 
ernistic  talk  without  the  quiver  of  an  eyelash — cited  me 
women  who'd  carried  on  businesses  and  raised  families, 
without  being  married,  when  I  spoke  of  sex  free 
dom—" 

"  Oh,  come !     Wasn't  he  shocked?  " 

"  He  was  not!  He  admitted  they  might  be  a  good  deal 
into  it — and  it  wasn't  only  lip-agreement,  either!  He 
says  he  and  Ethel  get  on  well  together,  but  that's  because 
they're  quite  extraordinarily  well  suited  to  each  other — 
'bout  nine  out  o'  ten  o'  the  married  couples  of  his 
acquaintance,  he  says,  would  do  better  if  they  weren't 
married!  I  wish  you  could  meet  him — but,  of  course, 
they've  both  gone  to  bed  hours  ago — they  turn  in  at 
sundown,  and  get  up  an  hour  before  sunrise — and  we 
wouldn't  be  able  to  talk  to  him  if  we  met  him  when 


358  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Ethel  was  around,  anyway — Ethel  is  one  of  those  natural 
dominants  you  read  about !  " 

They  had  come  opposite  the  dark  little  Hooghtyling 
front  porch.  Clotilde  stopped,  sniffed  the  air,  looked 
questioningly  at  the  Corporal;  the  Corporal,  being  linked 
to  her  by  one  arm,  had  stopped  also,  and  he  met  her 
look  with  pained  innocence. 

"  Clem,  don't  you  smell  something? "  she  asked. 

"  Why— I—"  He  sniffed  vigorously.  "  Why— I— 
there  does  seem  to  be — " 

"  Something  a  little  like  burning  rags?  " 

"  Well — yes — a  little.  Maybe  they  left  something  in 
the  stove — " 

"  They  didn't.  That's  Henry's  pipe !  "  Clotilde  was 
quite  certain  of  it.  "  He  smokes  the  most  altogether 
villainous  tobacco,  in  the  strongest  pipe — a  black,  thready 
stuff  called  '  Mechanic's  Delight '  in  a  pipe  that  looks  as 
if  it  had  come  out  of  the  Ark — and  been  in  steady  use 
ever  since!  I'd  recognize  that  smell  anywhere!  I'll 
bet — "  She  stared  hard  at  the  moon-shadowed  porch. 
" — Hen  Hoot  himself  is  sitting  in  there  this  minute, 
having  a  good-night  smoke — and  looking  us  over  with 
intense  interest.  Just  wait — I'm  going  to  tiptoe  in 
and  see!  If  we  could  get  him  out — without  Ethel's 
hearing — " 

The  Corporal  showed  no  great  enthusiasm  at  the  pros 
pect  of  making  a  crowd  out  of  what  had  been  most 
agreeable  company,  but  Clotilde  was  already  on  her  way. 
Over  the  flags  that  Ethel  had  laid,  and  which  consid 
erately  made  noise  enough  in  spite  of  tiptoeing  so  that 
Ethel  might  have  been  apprized  of  visitors  if  she  had 
had  ears  to  hear,  Clotilde  hurried,  and  up  to  the  porch; 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  359 

a  dark  shape  near  the  door  resolved  itself  into  the 
appearance  of  Henry  Hooghtyling,  sitting  in  the  little 
armless  rocker,  old  felt  hat  pulled  down  over  his  eyes, 
hunched  up  in  an  aged  overcoat,  puffing  his  pipe  with 
vigor  enough  to  suggest  a  perturbed  mind. 

"  Surmised  it  might  be  you,"  he  informed  her,  without 
rising,  perhaps  so  concerned  with  the  cause  of  his  erupt 
ing  grimness  that  he  forgot  the  expediency  of  rising. 
"  Won't  you  bring  in  your  young  man,  and  set  for  a 
spell?  I  guess  you're  both  ready  for  it,  if  you  been 
climbin'  that  old  hill." 

His  voice  had  its  natural  fullness;  it  was  never  loud, 
but,  at  the  moment,  it  was  loud  enough  to  move  Clotilde 
to  suggest,  in  an  undertone :  "  We  didn't  want  to  disturb 
Ethel;  we  thought  you  might  be  sitting  here,  and  I  just 
wanted  to  ask  you  to  come  out  and  meet — " 

"  Oh,  you  needn't .  worry  'bout  disturbin'  Ethel! " 
Hen's  voice  overflowed  with  exclamatory  bitterness  as 
he  pronounced  the  name  of  his  devoted  helpmeet : 
swirling  blue  raggish-smelling  clouds  spurted  in  Clotilde's 
direction.  "  They's  times,"  said  Hen,  controlling  him 
self  with  an  effort  that  made  him  hoarse  with  emotion, 
"  they's  times  when  Ethel's  exasperatin' — and  when  she 
gits  a  snorin'  spell's  one  of  'em!  It's  the  most  devil- 
ishest — "  He  choked,  and  went  on : 

"  Not  that  I'm  blamin'  her  for  what  she  can't  help — 
but  it's  enough  to  give  a  man  a  pain  strikes  right  to 
his  stummick — so  help  me,  Peter !  "  He  raised  his  eyes 
and  his  smoke-bursts  toward  the  ceiling,  as  if  for  aid, 
forgetting  both  of  Clotilde,  and  her  waiting  young  man, 
in  the  flood-tide  of  his  own  deep  nocturnal  woes.  "  A 
man  can't  keep  pokin'  her  in  the  ribs,  once  ev'y  minute, 


360  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

f'r  hours  an'  hours!  They's  limits — he  gets  wore  out! 
Why,  she'll  just  wake  up,  and  say,  '  Yes,  Hen/  and  the 
end  of  the  'Hen'  is  an  ' onck!' — beginnin'  another 
snore!  Off  an'  on  she'll  git  spells  like  this,  last  maybe 
a  week — maybe  it's  cold  in  her  head,  maybe  she's  got 
ad'noids — by  gorry,  she's  got  to  have  the  doctor  tomorry 
— and  if  it's  ad'noids,  she's  gotta  have  'em  cut  out!  If 
they's  anything  to  make  a  man  think  o'  divorce  courts 
— or  to  wish  he'd  had  the  sense  never  to've  got  mar 
ried—" 

"  I  should  think  you  could  sleep  in  another  room — 
couldn't  you  ?  "  suggested  Clotilde  faintly.  "  But,  now, 
won't  you  just  come — " 

"  That's  the  trouble'th  gettin'  married! "  Henry  was 
launched  again.  "  You  get  used  to — things — like 
sleepin'  double — and  you  couldn't  sleep,  noway,  if  they 
was  dif'rent. — 'Nother  room — what  good  'ud  another 
room  do,  anyway !  Just  listen — listen  to  that! " 

Clotilde  had  already  heard  "  that,"  but  it  rose  mightily 
in  the  silence  enjoined  by  Henry;  it  was  reverberent, 
vigorous,  mighty,  such  a  snore  as  Ulysses  might  have 
heard  in  the  Cyclops'  cave.  "  And  the  bedroom's  clean 
in  the  back  o'  the  house,  next  the  kitchen,  too — 'nother 
room  I"  Henry  growled,  raising  his  voice.  "Why, 
she's  shakin'  the  whole  blamed  house!  I  bet  the  cows 
can  hear  her,  down  to  the  barn! " 

He  puffed  violently,  and  grew  calmer.  "  Not  but  what 
I'm  glad  you  come  up — seein's  I  couldn't  get  no  rest 
anyway — " 

"  Oh,  we  were  just  out  for  a  walk,"  said  Clotilde, 
seizing  the  offered  opportunity,  "  and  I  thought,  if  you 
happened  to  be  up,  I'd  ask  you  to  come  out,  and  meet 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  361 

Mr.  Townes.     He's  an  old  friend  of  mine,  a  very  good 
old  friend—" 

"  Yes;  Ethel  was  tellin'  me — I  might's  well  go  out,  I 
guess,"  interrupted  Henry,  lost  to  more  than  a  weak  half- 
interest  in  anything  except  snores,  completely  lost  to 
politeness.  He  got  himself  rheumatically  out  of  his  chair 
and  accompanied  Clotilde,  at  a  creeping  waddle,  out  to 
the  gate.  He  acknowledged  her  introduction  by  a  glum : 
"  Ethel  was  tellin'  me  you  was  a  aviator — not  but  what 
I  don't  take  much  stock  into  the  war — puttin'  up  prices 
so  that  a  poor  man  don't  know  where  he's  at — flour  six 
teen  dollars  a  barrel,  right  now,  down  to  West  Beacon." 

Clotilde  was  much  disappointed  in  him;  even  taking 
into  consideration  the  fact  that  he  was  under  a  strain, 
that  he  was  not  himself,  she  was  disappointed.  He 
blinked  owlishly  at  them,  not  more  than  half-awake,  far 
more  than  half-outraged,  disgusted,  by  the  price  of  flour, 
the  war,  aviators,  snores,  everything.  She  prepared  to 
present  him  with  something  of  an  awakener.  "  Mr. 
Townes  and  I  are  to  be — "  She  broke  off  with  a  little 
gasp.  "  We're  engaged  to  each  other,"  she  finished, 
rather  lamely. 

In  spite  of  its  lameness,  that  brought  him  round  quite 
a  bit.  He  went  so  far  as  to  favor  them  with  a  feeble 
example  of  his  drop-jawed  surprise.  "  Ah — ho-oh?  "  he 
commented,  and  woke  up  to  the  extent  of  beginning  to 
consider  their  case  rather  than  his  own,  to  look  them 
over  for  possibilities.  "  Going  to  get  married f "  he 
asked,  and  there  was  a  certain  grimness,  as  well  as  doubt, 
in  the  question. 

"  Well — you  know,  Henry,  I've  talked  to  you  about — 
marriage — "  Clotilde  hesitated:  in  all  that  evening's 


362  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

Modernistic  love-making,  there  had  been  no  word  of  mar 
riage — even  if  she  had  known  her  then  attitude  toward 
marriage,  all  circumstances  considered,  she  had  no  ink 
ling  of  what  the  attitude  of  the  gentleman  most  con 
cerned  might  be. 

The  gentleman  most  concerned  rushed  gallantly  into 
the  breach :  "  We  certainly  are,  Mr.  Hooghtyling,  if  I 
have  anything  to  say  about  it ! " 

"  Hm,"  returned  Henry,  with  some  disfavor,  and  dis 
missed  that  un-Modern  fighting  character  to  look  for 
wisdom  in  the  face  of  Clotilde.  "  We — we  haven't  alto 
gether  decided  yet,"  admitted  Clotilde,  considerably  upset 
by  the  saturnine  survey  of  a  snore-confirmed  Modern- 
ist-on-the-subject-of-marriage.  "  When  circumstances — 
when  one  is  more  interested  in  other  things  than  in 
demonstrating — the — the — "  "  Hm,"  interrupted  Henry, 
with  rather  more  disfavor  than  he  had  shown  the  frankly 
matrimonially-inclined  Corporal.  The  Corporal  mur- 
. mured,  "Why,  you  old  Tartar!"  under  his  breath,  and 
became  more  respectful  of  rural  wisdom  immediately. 

Henry,  with  some  irritation,  relieved  the  short  silence 
that  followed: 

"  What  I  say  about  marriage  is,  they  might  be  better 
things,  and  they  might  be  worse — some  worse.  Espe 
cially  with  women — I've  knowed  two  women  get  on 
pretty  good,  raise  fam'lies  and  run  their  business,  'thout 
gettin'  married — and  maybe  they  was  better  off  than 
'bout  half  the  married  women  around  here — what  with 
husbands  raisin'  the  devil,  slave-drivin'  'em,  lettin'  'em 
have  no  money,  not  even  what  they've  rightfully  earnt — • 
even  if  some  o'  the  men  don't  spend  all  they  and  their 
wives  can  make  just  gettin'  drunk  down  to  Kingston  or 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  363 

Saugerties.  That's  lookin'  at  it  from  the  woman's  side, 
but  sometimes — yes,  sometimes,  the  men  have  it  hard, 
too.  I  always  did  say  people  oughtn't  get  married  less'n 
they  was  extraordinary  suited  to  each  other — which 
tarnation  few  is — and  even  when  they  think  they  am 
— and  get  on  pretty  fair  together,  considering  for  ten- 
twenty  years — somethin's  likely  to  come  up  to  make  a 
man  wonder  if  he  wouldn't  a-had  better  sense  to  stay 
single.  Not  but  what  I  don't  think  the  women  gin'ly  got 
most  cause  to  regret  doin'  it — but  the  men  have  got  some 
cause,  too. — Mind,  I  ain't  sayin'  nothin'  against  it,  if  you 
want  to  go  an'  do  it,  but  I'm  s'prised,  that's  all."  He 
was  addressing  this  last  to  Clotilde.  "  I'm  s'prised, 
that's  all;  and,  if  you  was  to  ask  me,  I'd  say,  think  it 
over — 'member  some  o'  the  things  you  told  me,  and  don't 
do  nawthin'  rash.  I  don't  say  a  word  against  Mr.  City, 
here,  but  people's  got  to  be  extraordinary  suited  to  each 
other  to  stand  gettin'  married — that's  all  I  say!  An', 
even  then,  though  a  man  couldn't  ask  for  a  finer  woman, 
he  don't  know  when  she's  goin'  to  start  somethin' — not 
that  I'm  objectin'  to  Ethel  for  somethin'  she  can't  help, 
though  'memberin'  that  don't  help  much  when  a  man's  got 
to  set  up  three  nights  runnin'  till  he  gets  so  dead,  dog- 
tired  he  could  sleep  through  a  cyclone,  before  he  can  get 
any  rest — in  his  own  house.  All  I  say  about  marriage 
is,  it's  dub-yous — that's  what  it  is,  it's  dub-yous!  And 
now  I  guess — " 

Clotilde  tried  to  interrupt :  "  But  I  haven't  said  we've 
decided — " 

"  I  guess,  what  with  waitin'  up  and  talkin'  here  when 
a  man's  old  and  good  for  nawthin's  I  be  had  ought  to 
a-been  abed  for  three-four  hours,"  Henry  continued, 


364  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

with  a  kind  of  disgusted  grumpiness,  "  I've  most  reached 
the  place  where  I  could  rest  easy  while  the  house  blowed 
down,  and  I  ain't  good  for  nawthin',  not  even  talkin', 
and  I  guess  I  got  good  cause,  too,  so  I'll  leave  you  two, 
and  hope  to  see  you  again,  when  I  ain't  feelin'  more'n 
half-asleep,  nor  my  stummick  so  terrible's  it's  been  last 
two-three  days.  Night's  time  for  young  folks, — and  I 
guess  you  won't  miss  me,  much — nor  mind  the  free 
advice  I've  handed  out — "  He  began  to  waddle  toward 
the  house,  growling  grumpily :  "  Young  folks  most  gin'ly 
got  to  pay  for  their  schoolin',  anyway." 

Clotilde,  too  much  put  out  and  surprised  to  laugh, 
started  up  the  road;  the  Corporal  made  up  by  laughing 
uproariously,  as  soon  as  they  had  passed  the  barns. 
"  He's — father's  a  wonder! "  chortled  the  Corporal. 

"  I've  never  seen  him  like  that — he's  usually  genial, 
bland — I  hardly  knew  him — " 

"  Yes :  he  did  seem  to  be  enjoying  a  large,  blue  grouch 
— and  because  his  daughter  was  thinking  of  getting 
married,  instead  of — of  raising  a  family  and  conducting 
her  own  business — " 

"  It  wasn't  that,"  Clotilde  objected ;  and  related  the 
incident  of  the  snores.  "  But  he  did  say  some  things 
well  worth  listening  to — about  marriage — Clem,"  she 
finished. 

"  He  did  so! "  The  Corporal  admitted  it  joyously. 
"  Although  a  Modernist  of  the  Modernists,  he  admitted 
that,  when  people  were  extraordinarily  well  suited 
to  each  other,  they  might  get  married!  I  hope  that 
settles  it ! " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know—" 

"  But  you  admitted  we  were  engaged,  dear !  " 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  365 

"  I  didn't  necessarily  mean  engaged  to  be  married — 
I  am  engaged  to  you,  dear — there's  no  question  about 
your  having  my  love — quite  all  of  it,  dear — " 

"  But,  Clo' — then  let's  go  back  to  what  you  said :  you 
said,  when  one  was  more  interested  in  other  things  than 
in  demonstrating  the — something  or  other — " 

"  Oh,  I  was  thinking  of  something  Arthur  Kling  said : 
that,  if  one  was  too  much  interested  in  doing  something 
beside  demonstrating  the  freedom  of  the  sexes — and  that 
might  be  a  good  argument." 

"It  certainly  is!" 

"  I  think  you'd  consider  any  argument  good,  just 
now,  that  led  in  the  direction  of  the  matrimonial 
ball-and-chain !  What's  become  of  your  Modernism, 
Clem?" 

"I've  still  got  it,  all  right,  but  I  think  it's  been 
tempered,  a  little,  by  admixture  with  some  archaic  facts ! 
Look  here,  Clo',  it's  seemed  to  me  lately — I've  done  a 
lot  of  thinking  about  things  in  general  since  I've  been 
on  furlough,  puttin'  'em  up  against  the  background  of 
the  war,  I  suppose — and  it's  seemed  to  me  that  marriage 
might  be  worth  while  as  constituting  a  sort  of  social 
recognition — a  common  convenience — it  makes  things 
easier  for  people,  economizes  their  energies,  as  social 
recognition  of  facts  is  bound  to  do.  Why,  just  for 
instance,  it  will  be  much  easier  for  me  to  write  to  you, 
if  you're  my  wife — to  see  you,  if  you  want  to  try  to  get 
across — " 

"  Well,  then,  if  it's  a  mere  legal  convenience — " 

"Clo' — dear — you  will?"  Somewhat  overwhelmed, 
he  tried  to  stop  her,  to  celebrate  the  climacteric  moment; 
but  it  was  decidedly  not  climacteric,  even  if  not  down- 


366  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

right  anti-climacteric,  to  Clotilde,  and  she  refused  to 
celebrate.  "  It's  not  of  the  slightest  importance — legal 
marriage — except  as  a  kind  of  convenience,"  she  ob 
jected  :  "  like  our  using  one  trunk,  instead  of  two — or 
the  same  looking-glass.  Our  love's  the  important  thing 
— and  I  don't  want  our  attention  distracted  from  it  by 
the  consideration  of  any  beastly  archaic  convenience — 
and  inconvenience — such  as  marriage!  We'll  just  try 
to  get  it  over  with  as  painlessly  as  possible,  when  we 
have  time  and  opportunity.  I  don't  need  it  to  make  me 
feel  really  married  to  you,  dear — although  just  your 
wanting  to  marry  me  helps — it  makes  me  feel  that  you're 
confident  about  your  love  for  me — about  its  -bigness  and 
— and  durability — as  nothing  else,  I  suppose,  could. 
Perhaps  even  Modernistic  men  should  offer  to  marry  a 
woman,  if  they  really  love  her — but  as  for  the  actual 
legal  and  religious  marriage  itself — why,  I  feel  every  bit 
as  much  your  wife,  your  till-death-it-do-them-part  wife, 
right  now,  as  if  we  were  just  stepping  into  the  street  after 
the  most  barbarous  of  high-church  marriages. — Yes,  I 
feel  a  hundred  times  more  your  wife,  for  then  I'd  prob 
ably  be  wondering  if  my  veil  was  on  straight — instead  of 
just  being  glad,  all  through  me,  that  we'd  found  each 
other — that  we  were  going  to  be  so  happy  and — and 
useful,  I  hope — because  we'd  found  each  other !  As  for 
the  legal  formula  that  we'll  go  through — at  the  cost 
of  some  inconvenience — that's  neither  here  nor  there. 
Don't  you  feel  a  good  deal  about  our  coming  legal 
marriage  as  I  do?  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  entirely — but  I'll  try  to  keep  my  un 
seemly  gratification  within  bounds!"  he  said,  and 
laughed.  They  walked  on,  not  slowly  in  spite  of  the 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  367 

steep,  upward  road,  now  narrowed  to  little  more  than  a 
bridle-path;  the  Corporal  meditated  smilingly,  with  low 
ered  eyes  that  finally  noticed  Clotilde's  footgear. 

"  Clo',  dear,  you've  got  on  nothing  but  pumps — and 
we  must  have  walked  miles!  "  he  protested. 

"  But  don't  you  rather  like  my  pumps?  "  she  returned, 
pausing  long  enough  to  hold  one  out  for  his  inspection; 
their  delicacy  was  a  little  grimed  by  the  dust  of  the 
road,  but  they  were  still  trim  enough  in  their  smooth  kid 
grayness,  and  narrow  gray  silk  ribbons  bound  them, 
Greek  fashion,  to  her  ankles.  He  admired  them: 
"  They're  beautiful — though  not  quite  as  Quaker-like, 
perhaps,  as  the  rest  of  you!  " 

"  Oh,  most  of  the  Quakerishness  is  outside — I'm  quite 
resplendent  underneath :  and  doesn't  thee  rather  like  my 
Quakerishness,  too,  friend  Clement?" 

They  made  no  progress,  at  least  no  progress  up  the 
road,  for  some  little  time  after  that.  "  How  can  a  man 
talk  sense,  when — "  he  protested. 

"  But,  friend  Clement,  is  this  any  night  for  sense  ? 
The  moon  rebukes  thee — we  were  unfaithful  to  her, 
friend  Clement,  an  we  were  not  rank  lunatics!  Nor 
will  I  be  unfaithful  to  her,  Diane,  Artemis,  Astarte, 
patron  goddess  of  virgins,  especially  of  virgins  about — 
But  I  fear  that  my  mythology  may  lead  me  into  unseemly 
ways,  friend  Clement,  if  only  into  quoting  a  most  un 
seemly  verse  of  Browning's !  " 

"  Thee  is  altogether  the  most  wonderful — absolutely 
distracting  Quakeress — " 

"  I  fear  any  proper  Quaker  might  be  shocked,  friend 
Clement,  knowing  the  verse  of  Browning's  to  which  I 
refer,  and  hearing  thee!" 


368  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Well,  so  much  the  worse  for  him,  then !  But, 
frankly,  Clo'— " 

"  I  am  all  of  a  frankness,  friend  Clement !  " 

"  Come,  now,  dearest  girl — here  we  are  miles  from 
anywhere — and  it  must  be  eleven  o'clock !  " 

"  Thee  is  a  poor  guesser.  'Tis  a  good  half-past  by 
my  un-Quakerly  wrist-watch.  We  came  monstrous 
slow — thanks  to  interruptions — for  which  thee,  friend 
Clement,  was  responsible — quite  as  much  as  myself !  " 

"  But  I  say,  you  goose — have  you  any  idea  where 
we're  going?  " 

"  None  whatever !  " 

"  Well — stop  a  minute  till  we  talk  about  it !  " 

"  Let  us  proceed  while  we  discuss !  " 

"  But  I  should  think  you'd  be  all  tired  out ! " 

"  Then  thee  knows  little  about  me — and  less  about  love 
in  general." 

"  Weil,  I  confess—" 

"  Is  thee  tired,  friend  Clement  ?  " 

"Not  at  all!     But—" 

"  Then  I  am  even  less  tired.  Has  thee  never  seen  a 
butterfly — or  an  eagle,  for  I  like  the  eagle  better — soar 
when  it  recognizes  its  mate  ?  " 

"  Oh,  my  dear—" 

"Well,  I'm  soaring,  friend  Clement;  it  is  thy  part 
just  to  keep  up  till  I  decide  it  is  time  for  soaring  to 
stop!" 


CHAPTER  XIII 

A  LUCKY  CHAPTER,  IN  WHICH  TWO  STRAYS,  NOT 
ONLY  FROM  MANHATTAN  MASKINGS,  CHARADES, 
AND  AMATEUR  THEATRICALS,  BUT  FROM  SOME 
RECENT  MORE  FUNDAMENTAL  REVELS  OF  THEIR 
OWN,  SIT  UPON  THE  BROW  OF  A  MOUNTAIN,  WON 
DERING  ABOUT  THE  WORLD  BENEATH,  AND  COUN 
SELING  HOW  BEST  TO  BEAR  A  NOBLE  PART,  SEE 
ING  THAT  HELL  HAS  MANIFESTLY  CRACKED  OPEN 
ACROSS  SEVERAL  CONTINENTS 

NEAR  the  summit  of  Teyce  Ten  Eyck,  as  there  are  near 
the  summits  of  several  of  the  much-abraded  Catskill 
peaks  in  the  neighborhood,  there  is  an  unfailing  spring 
of  pure,  cold  water.  Local  tradition  says  that  the  great 
spring  welling  up  from  a  cleft  only  a  few  hundred  feet 
below  the  topmost  crag  of  Bear  Mountain,  rises  and 
lowers  daily  in  response  to  the  Atlantic  tides.  Most  of 
the  more  sophisticated  Woodbridgians  deny  this  on 
general  principles,  not  one  of  them,  so  far  as  is  known, 
ever  having  gone  up  to  see  about  it  for  himself.  Perhaps 
not  a  dozen  of  them  have  been  up  to  the  nearer,  and  more 
accessible,  if  loftier,  summit  and  smaller  spring  of  Teyce 
Ten  Eyck,  even  though  they  will  tell  you,  with  great 
enthusiasm,  about  the  magnificent  view  from  the  summit, 
about  the  surprising  spring,  nearly  three  thousand  feet 
above  the  valley,  streaming  up  from  a  rock-hole  as  round 
as  if  drilled,  not  fifty  feet  below  the  eastern  promontory 
of  the  second  highest  peak  in  the  Catskills. 

Two  decades  after  the  Civil  War,  a  large  summer  hotel 

369 


370  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

was  built  near  the  spring,  anchored  down  to  the  ledges 
by  guy-chains  to  keep  it  from  being  blown  down  into 
the  village,  equipped  with  negro  waiters,  a  swimming  pool 
below  the  spring,  a  fine  line  of  eatables  and  drinkables, 
and  rates  ranging  from  ten  to  thirty  dollars  per  day.  It 
never  prospered  greatly,  due  perhaps  to  the  creeping 
nature  of  the  two-hour  drive  up  from  Woodbridge, 
making  it  more  than  three  hours  from  the  railroad,  and 
finally  burned  down,  heavily  insured,  in  1908.  Of  late 
years,  four  or  five  picnic  parties,  always  boarders,  never 
natives,  visit  the  summit  during  the  boarding  season. 

Near  the  spot  where  the  verandah  of  the  hotel  used 
to  look  southeastward  across  miles  of  enminiatured 
country — as  far  as  New  York  City,  granted  binoculars 
and  a  fine  day,  any  true  Woodbridgian  will  tell  you— 
successive  generations  of  picnickers  have  built,  and  even 
gone  some  way  toward  furnishing,  a  small  cabin.  It 
began  with  a  few  half-burned  beams  from  the  old  hotel, 
grew  by  the  addition  of  boards  from  one  of  the  old  blown- 
down  barns,  spiked  together  by  hand-wrought  nails 
picked  up  among  the  ashes  in  the  hotel  cellar,  and  began 
to  be  furnished  by  articles  left  by  picnickers  who  didn't 
want  to  carry  down  as  much  as  they  had  carried  up. 
Sudden  rainstorms,  especially  prevalent  on  the  summit, 
were  the  best  incentive  to  work  on  the  cabin  itself ; 
blistering  hot  days,  which  August  brings  occasionally 
even  to  a  Catskill  peak,  were  the  best  for  new 
furnishings. 

The  cabin  had  no  windows,  nor  any  door  in  the  door 
way,  but  it  partially  redeemed  these  architectural  defects 
by  the  great  advantage  of  a  small  stone  fireplace;  the 
original  board  chimney  had  gradually  been  superseded 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  37' 

by  piled  stone,  a  change  for  the  better  that  was  made 
compulsory  for  all  houses  in  Woodbridge  in  the  year 
1670,  and  was  adopted  by  the  Teyce  Ten  Eyck  cabin 
only  about  two  hundred  and  forty  years  later — a  very 
creditable  compliance  with  fire  laws,  all  things  considered. 

Shelves  ran  along  both  sides  of  the  six-by-ten  room; 
one  represented  the  butler's  pantry,  the  other  the  library 
and  general  knick-knackery.  The  butler's  pantry  con 
tained  several  Mason  jars,  one  always  full  of  coffee,  the 
other  of  sugar, — since  most  picnickers  came  oversupplied 
with  both  commodities — several  round  coffee  cans  likely 
to  contain  a  moldy  scrap  of  bread,  remnants  that  might 
once  have  been  olives,  or  pickles,  or  bacon,  or  even  an 
occasional  unopened  and  usable  can  of  these  picnic 
delicacies.  An  especially  large  can,  two-pound  size,  still 
bore,  charcoaled  across  its  rusty  front  in  spite  of  the 
passage  of  some  years,  the  enticing  legend :  "  Fresh 
eggs."  The  contents,  which  were  a  great  boon  to  every 
picnicking  party,  still  had  an  undeniable  odor  of  egg. 
Doubtless  thoughtful  picnickers  added  a  fresh  egg,  from 
time  to  time,  and  renewed  the  charcoal  legend,  to  the 
end  that  there  might  be  greater  joy  in  the  hearts  of  the 
stout  few  adventurers  who  still  visited  the  summit  of 
Teyce  Ten  Eyck. 

Under  the  shelves,  on  wooden  pegs  and  nails,  hung 
various  discarded  coats,  hats,  and  sweaters,  and  on  a 
birch  beam  that  crossed  midway  the  room  at  the  level 
of  the  low  eaves,  a  neatly  folded  steamer  rug,  still 
serviceable  in  spite  of  some  rents,  a  tan  army  blanket, 
even  more  serviceable  in  spite  of  an  accident  with  fire 
at  one  corner  that  had  doubtless  persuaded  its  former 
owner  to  leave  it,  and  a  red  woolen  blanket  too  grease- 


372  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

stained  to  appeal  except  to  great  chilliness,  waited  hos 
pitably  for  accidental  discoverers.  There  was  a  rectan 
gular  slab  of  bluestone  at  one  side,  raised  on  boulders 
for  legs,  so  that  it  made  a  very  acceptable  seat,  or  at  a 
pinch  a  shortish  couch  for  one  who  didn't  mind  cramping 
and  hardness.  Sections  of  beams  and  a  large,  square 
stone  or  two  suggested  seats  along  the  opposite  wall. 
The  library,  above  them,  offered  a  choice  of  "  A  Tale 
of  Two  Cities,"  "  Little  Women,"  or  "  A  Naturalist  on 
the  Amazon  "  to  the  literarily  minded.  A  pickle  bottle, 
holding  a  few  withered  briary  stems  that  might  once  have 
been  wild  roses,  gave  an  esthetic  touch. 

On  the  stone  slab  above  the  little  fireplace,  someone 
had  scratched  hieroglyphics  that  might  have  been  in 
tended  for  "  Welcome."  Aged  iron  frying  pans  on 
either  side,  a  rusty  tin  tobacco-can  on  the  hearth  labeled 
"  Matches,"  and  a  dilapidated  market  basket  half-full 
of  pine  cones,  carried  out  the  same  idea  in  a  more  prac 
tical  way.  A  bit  of  board  over  the  not  very  successful 
attempt  at  a  mantel-shelf  announced:  "Ten  Eyck  Inn. 
Rates,  $00.  a  day,  and  down."  It  was  before  this 
announcement,  revealed  by  the  moonlight  slanting  in  at 
the  doorless  doorway,  that  Clotilde  and  her  Corporal 
stayed  their  soaring. 

"Why,  it's  a  perfect  duck  of  an  Inn!"  exclaimed 
Clotilde,  staring  about.  "  Oh,  look — '  Fresh  eggs ! ' 

"  Say — "  commented  the  Corporal,  almost  ready  to 
believe  it.  "  An  egg  wouldn't  go  so  worse,  fried  in  one 
of  those  old  pans !  "  He  took  down  the  can,  got  off  the 
rusty  lid  after  a  struggle,  with  Clotilde  standing  at  his 
shoulder,  remarked  "  Whee-ew ! "  while  Clotilde  backed 
rapidly  away,  and  slapped  the  cover  back  into  the  place. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  373 

"Really — I  shall  report  it  to  the  proprietor!"  she 
gasped,  and  they  laughed  themselves  into  each  other's 
a/ms.  It  was  a  welcome  let-down,  for  they  had  become 
a  little  serious  and  fearful  about  themselves  with  looking 
into  their  futures,  during  the  last  two  hours  of  their 
climb,  as  man  and  maid  who  had  decided  to  link 
their  lives  had  a  right  to  do,  even  if  the  war 
had  not  hung  a  dark  background  for  all  of  their 
thoughts. 

Clotilde,  recovering  from  the  effect  of  "  Fresh  eggs," 
made  a  housewifely  search  of  the  other  cans,  and  dis 
covered  coffee,  sugar,  and  a  small  can  of  baked  beans, 
all  in  fair  states  of  preservation.  "  At  least  we  can  have 
something — before  we  start  back  down,"  she  said;  "and 
now,  since  we  might  be  accused  of  being  risque  if  we 
stayed  here  longer  unchaperoned — settled  married  people 
though  we  seem  to  have  become,  for  the  most  part— 
shan't  we  go  out  and  take  a  peep  at  one  of  the  most 
magnificent  views  in  the  Catskills — and  talk  some 
more? " 

"  It  might  be  rather  chilly  out  there,"  suggested  the 
Corporal.  "  Maybe  a  good  fire  in  here — " 

"  No,"  she  interrupted :  "if  we're  not  really  mar 
ried—  She  was  turned  partly  from  him,  looking  with 
peculiar  intentness  at  the  blankets  that  hung  down  from 
their  birch  beam.  "If  you  won't  feel  that  we're  really 
married  until  that  legal  ceremony  is  performed — why,  this 
intimate  little  inn  is  no  place  for  us.  I  will  be  anything 
rather  than  conventionally  risque! "  She  fingered  the 
blankets. 

Corporal  Townes  straightened  up  as  if  about  to  salute, 
stared  hard,  swallowed  hard,  refused  temptation.  "  No 


374  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

— I  shan't — feel  that  way,"  he  admitted,  with  some  ef 
fort.  "  No — I  agree — we'd  better  make  it — the  view." 

She  turned  toward  him,  surprised,  breathing  quickly 
between  her  half-parted  lips.  "  Well,  then —  she 
hazarded :  she  seemed  unable  to  believe  that  she  had  un 
derstood  him. 

"  Clo' — dear — please  understand — please  forgive  me — 
maybe  one  reason  I'm  so  keen  on  a  conventional  marriage 
is  because  I  want  this  to  be — different — in  every  way — 
don't  you  understand  ?  "  he  stammered,  apologized,  ex 
plained. 

She  turned  back  toward  the  blankets.  "  That's  the 
best  reason — you  could  have  given  me,"  she  said,  rather 
weakly.  "  I  suppose  it  explains  a  lot  of  Modernistic 
marriages."  In  spite  of  the  excellence  of  the  reason,  it 
seemed  to  have  aspects  that  made  her  ready  to  let  it  rest 
in  peace.  "  Here — what  are  these?  " 

She  carried  two  of  them,  the  ultra-greasy  red  blanket 
and  the  tan  army  blanket,  into  the  brighter  moonlight  of 
the  doorway  and  looked  them  over.  "  One's  horrible, 
but  the  other  looks  pretty  good,"  she  decided.  "  Bring 
that  other  one,  please!"  The  Corporal  brought  the 
steamer  rug.  "  That's  pretty  good,  too — I  can  wear 
that,  because  I'll  have  on  my  heavy  coat  and  the  rents 
won't  matter — you  take  the  tan  one — we  can  wrap  up 
in  them  and  be  as  comfortable  as  blanket  Indians." 

"  Or  bugs  in  a  rug,"  suggested  the  Corporal. 

"  We're  not  bugs — I'm  sure  we're  behaving  with  per 
fect  propriety,  prisms,  and  prunes,"  returned  Clotilde,  and 
led  the  way  with  great  dignity,  in  spite  of  a  reminiscence 
of  the  tail  of  an  iguanadon  in  the  trailing  corner  of  her 
blanket,  out  to  the  edge  of  the  bluestone  cliff  that  dropped 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  375 

away  fifty  paces  in  front  of  the  cabin,  found  a  niche 
in  the  rocks  big  enough  for  two  if  the  two  didn't  mind 
close  quarters,  and  sat  down  to  appreciate  the  view.  The 
Corporal,  in  all  things,  followed  her  lead. 

They  didn't  appreciate  the  view,  spacious  and  eerie 
and  blue-misty  wjth  moonlight  to  distraction  though  it 
was.  Their  insignificance,  their  aloneness,  up  there  in 
the  huge,  moon-vastened  night,  threw  them  back  upon 
themselves,  upon  their  smallness  in  the  face  of  the  large 
forces  that  gathered  around  their  lives.  Their  little 
playtime  mood,  aroused  by  the  ridiculous  Inn,  passed, 
leaving  them  once  more  eager  to  understand  and  appre 
ciate  each  other's  strange  personalities  while  there  was 
yet  time — to  press  close  to  each  other,  rather  spirit  to 
spirit  than  body  to  body,  even  though  the  closeness  of 
their  bodies  in  that  little  cleft  in  the  rocks  was  sweet, 
too. 

Almost  at  once,  Clotilde,  reaching  out  to  touch  the 
spirit  of  her  soldier,  dishonored  the  much-bepraised  view 
by  saying,  "  It  must  be  a  little  like  being  up  in  an  air 
plane — although  I  suppose  it  doesn't  seem  anything  like 
so  high?" 

"  Yes,  it  does — it  seems  even  higher,"  said  the  Cor 
poral  thoughtfully,  given  inward  joy  by  the  touch  of  her 
question,  the  intimate  personal  touch  that  spoke  of  her 
nearness  to  him.  "  You  see,  when  you  get  up,  you  have 
nothing  much  to  measure  distance  by — you  just  know 
you're  up.  And,  when  you  see  other  'planes  above  you, 
you  feel  quite  low  down,  it  doesn't  matter  what  your 
baragraph  reads." 

Clotilde  looked  at  him  with  faint  perplexity  on  her 
face.  "  I  can't  understand  it  very  well — all  that  part  of 


376  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

your  life — you  do  look  a  little  like  an  eagle — with  your 
big  nose — "  She  put  her  head  down  in  the  hollow  of 
his  shoulder;  her  voice  softened  almost  to  breaking:  "I 
suppose  I  shall  be  awfully  afraid  for  you — my  eagle !  " 

"  Oh,  come!  "  he  demurred;  "  I'm  only—" 

:<  You  needn't  adopt  any  comforting  tone,  man,  dear !  " 
she  reproved  him.  "  I'm  not  going  to  cry,  or  do  any 
thing  foolish.  Maybe  I  will,  after  you're  gone — but,  just 
now,  it  seems  too  big — and  everlastingly  strange — I  feel 
perfectly  calm  about  it — although,  perhaps,  having  you 
here  with  your  arm  around  me  helps  in  that! " 

He  said :  "  I'm  glad  you  feel  that  way.  That's  the 
effect  you  have  on  me — I  hesitated  to  come  out  here, 
you  know,  because — I  was  afraid  I  wouldn't  be  calm. 
When  I  left  France — even  after  I'd  landed  in  New  York 
— I'm  sure  just  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  cliff  like  this 
would  have  made  me  weak  and  dizzy.  Looking  over  the 
side  of  the  steamer,  down  to  the  water,  as  we  came  into 
New  York  harbor,  gave  me  a  faint  feeling  of  nausea — 
think  of  it !  Oh,  I'd  about  given  up  hope !  " 

He  had  become  rather  disjointed.  "  You  mean,  those 
were  all  effects  of  your  breakdown?"  she  asked.  "I 
don't  just  see — how  it  happened." 

"  Well — I  saw  a  newspaper  report  that  got  it  pretty 
well;  it  said,  among  other  things,  that,  some  day,  a  little 
bell  would  ring  inside  the  aviator's  head,  and  he'd  know 
he  was  through.  It's  the  same  with  circus  performers 
— high  wire  men,  you  know, — the  continuous  strain, 
helped  by  one  good  accident,  will  break  the  best  of  them 
— and  send  them  to  the  country  to  raise  chickens." 

"  Did  you  have  an  accident?  " 

"  Yes — a  few.     But  I  didn't  start  with  the  intention 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  377 

of  discussing  my  interesting  case,  dear — I  started  to  try 
to  thank  you — " 

"  What  kind  of  accidents?  " 

"  Oh,  I've  been  shot  down  once,  and  had  four  or  five 
smash-ups  landing — you  know  those  small-winged  brutes 
have  to  land  at  about  eighty  miles  an  hour — just  the 
ordinary  run  of  accidents. — But,  you  see,  dear,  the  cure 
for  my  trouble  had  to  be  a  kind  of  spiritual  rejuvenation 
—something  everlastingly  deep,  vital — They  told  me  that, 
and  smiled  sympathetically,  as  a  doctor  might  smile  when 
he  tells  a  paralytic  that  ten  years  off  his  age  will  cure 
him.  You  see,  not  one  in  ten  who  breaks  as  I  did — 
ever  comes  back.  But  I  was  just  going  to  say  that  I 
thought,  maybe,  I  might  come  back — and  if  I  do,  I  guess 
you're — responsible." 

She  asked,  with  great  calmness,  "  Do  you  really  think 
my  love — our  love — might  do  that?"  But  he  knew, 
from  her  deepened  breathing,  how  she  was  stirred. 

"I  really  think  it's  done  it,  dear!  If  I  don't  get 
excited,  and  wave  my  hat  and  hurrah,  or  anything — well, 
I'll  bet  Lazarus'  sisters  didn't,  either,  when  he  was  raised 
from  the  dead !  Probably  I  feel  a  good  deal  as  Lazarus' 
sisters  did — for  I  certainly  never  expected  to  see  my 
flying-nerve  again!  I  can't  tell  you  how  good  it  is  to 
sit  here  and  feel  calmed,  soothed  by  this  little  height — 
instead  of  nauseated  by  it — and  to  feel  something  cool 
and  settled — and  everlastingly  confident — in  my  very 
nerve-fibres.  Of  course  I'll  never  fly  as  I  did  when  I 
was  new  at  it — with  a  kind  of  drunken  recklessness  the 
beginners  have — but  I  think  I'll  have  both  nerve,  and  an 
intelligent  regard  for  my  own  life,  that  may  make  me 
just  as  deadly! — And  that's  quite  enough  of  me  and  my: 


378  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

except  just  to  repeat — thank  you,  dear !  And  to  remark 
that  you — what  you  mean  to  me — seems  already  to  have 
reached  the  very  roots  of  my  soul.  Well,  it's  something 
to  expect  to  be  married — it's — it's  rather  tremendous,  you 
know,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  Clo' ! " 

"  And  I  suppose  you  didn't  imagine  there  would  be 
anything  tremendous  about  it — that  it  would  just  be 
cheerful — and  rather  silly,  perhaps, — I  believe  that's  the 
commonly  accepted  young  man's  idea  of  getting  en 
gaged."  She  thought  of  Skeeter. 

"  No— 7no,  not  entirely,"  he  protested;  "but  I  didn't 
think  it  would  make  me  feel  so — well,  everlastingly 
serious." 

"  Anyway,  I  thank  God  you  do !  I'd  be  most  miser 
able  if  you  didn't.  Although,  for  me,  I  confess  thinking 
of  the  war  makes  me  feel  more  serious  than  anything 
else." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — I've  rather  got  used  to  the  war — 
but  this— you,  Clo'—" 

"  And  I  suppose  I'd  rather  got  used  to  understanding 
what  a  real  love  would  be  like.  But  the  war — I've  hardly 
thought  of  the  war  at  all — it  seemed  outside  of  every 
thing  I  was  interested  in,  some  way — and  now — now  that 
it's  come  home  to  me  with  such  a  vengeance — Well, 
I'll  have  to  try  to  understand  the  war — as  much  of  it 
as  I  can.  In  its  larger  aspects,  the  war — it's — " 

"  I've  sometimes  thought  of  it  as  about  two  thousand 
miles  of  flaming  Hell,  cracked  open  across  three  con 
tinents,"  he  put  in. 

She  thought  about  that.  "  Yes,  that's  the  bird's-eye 
view — the  aviator's  view,  I  suppose,"  she  agreed;  "but 
to  me,  here  in  Woodbridge  where  it  began  to  force 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  379 

itself  on  my  attention — it  seemed  more  like  a  dangerous 
disease,  spreading,  taking  people's  minds  off  nobler 
things,  taking  the  young  men  away,  perhaps  to  mutila 
tion  and  death,  leaving  mothers,  sisters,  sweethearts 
either  proud,  or  broken  and  anguished— or  both: — yes, 
it  seems  to  me  more  like  some  ancient  plague  that  the 
world  ought  to  have  learned  to  abate,  long  ago.  But, 
since  the  world  hasn't,  one  ought  to  try  to  do  something 
about  it,  I  suppose." 

"  It  doesn't  seem  so  much  like  a  plague  to  me — there's 
a  suggestion  of  the  hand  of  God — at  least  of  no  human 
design  in  a  plague,"  he  countered.  "  To  me  it  seems 
more  like  a  conflagration — or,  as  I  said,  more  like  Hell 
cracked  open,  by  a  Hell-worshiping  people — intention 
ally  cracked  open  so  that  Hell's  high  priests — in  Germany 
— might  seize  the  opportunity  for  murder,  rape,  pillage — 
a  general  loot  and  slaughter  of  their  neighbors." 

"  Well — I  can  accept  that — And  still  feel  one  ought  to 
do  something — " 

"  No  Pacifistic  tin  dippers,  beer-glasses,  and  tea-cups !  " 
He  was  beginning  to  be  aroused.  "  The  thing  to  do  is 
to  sacrifice  these  Hell-lovers  to  their  damned  Moloch — 
as  they've  sacrificed  others,  and  are  trying  to  sacrifice 
millions  more — to  sacrifice  them  until  they  decide  that  / 
decency  and  forbearance  and  respect  as  between  men,  and 
nations,  too,  is  better  than  epidemic  murder  and  looting! 
They're  learning — the  high  priests  of  Moloch,  beginning 
with  the  damned  Kaiser  and  his  neurotic  ape  of  a  son, 
down  to  the  least  of  their  devoted  boy-slaves  in  the 
trenches — they're  learning — " 

"  But  if  we  could  teach  them  without  killing  them, 
ClenW 


38o  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

"  Well,  we  can't — and  if  we  stopped  killing  them  to 
try,  they'd  be  at  our  throats — looting,  killing  without 
mercy — that's  their  cry — might  rules  the  world — the 
doctrine  of  their  beloved  Moloch — who  teaches  them  to 
disregard  scraps  of  paper  and  pity  and  justice — and  will 
put  half  the  German  nation  into  Hell,  along  with  their 
victims,  before  he's  through  with  them !  Dear,  you  can't 
argue  with  people  who've  made  a  religion  of  human 
sacrifice,  of  pillage,  of  thievery,  and  dishonor!  When 
their  sword  is  broken,  when  their  power  to  put  their 
religion  into  practice  is  stopped,  we  can  begin 
to  argue — after  peace  is  declared,  the  real  struggle 
between  right  and  might — at  least  in  Germany — may 
begin!" 

"  I  think  you're  a  better  poet,  now,  Clem,  than  you 
were — when  you  used  to  write  sonnets !  " 

"  No — but,  seriously,  dear — don't  you  agree  with 
me?  " 

"  Yes,  I  do !  "  She  smiled  into  his  aroused  and  bitter 
face.  ''  You've  given  more  thought  to  this  war-matter 
than  I  have — and  I  trust  your  brains  in  it,  as  you've 
trusted  mine  in — well,  such  a  small  matter  as  our  love, 
dear — to  which  I  may  have  given  more  thought  than 
you.  I — I'm  glad  you're  going  back,  man,  to — to  help 
break  their  swords !  " 

He  was  uplifted  by  the  cold  calmness  of  her  face. 
"  I'll  remember  your  face,  like  that,  dear !  "  he  told  her. 
'  You'll  be — a  proper  saint  for  me  to  pray  to !  " 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  if  I  only  could  guard  you — bring  you 
safe  back — " 

"  I  think  I'll  come  back — I  feel  it — I  have  a  kind  of 
crazy  trust  in  Providence,"  he  interrupted,  drawing  her 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  381 

head,  with  infinite  tenderness,  down  to  his  shoulder. 
"  I  didn't  have  it  over  there,  but  I  have  now — and  I 
hope  I  keep  it.  Providence,  '  hunches,'  all  sorts  of  super 
stitions,  flourish  among  erstwhile  sane  flying-men,  you 
know.  I  confess,  for  instance,  that  I  wouldn't  light  a 
cigarette  from  the  match  that  had  lighted  two  others! 
You  don't  know  how  much  I  tie  to  it,  this  new  feeling 
that  I'm  not  slated  to  die  over  there — that  you  seem  to 
have  given  me — it's  utterly  baseless,  of  course, — and 
yet—" 

"  But  perhaps  there  may  be  something  in  it !  Will  I 
— will  having  me,  my  hope,  almost  my  very  life,  dear, 
in  your  hands — " 

'  Yes,  it  will!  It  will  keep  me  from  fumbling — I'll 
have  something  to  pray  to — and,  God,  how  every  soldier 
needs  something  to  pray  to!  The  Catholic  Church  may 
be  re-established  in  France  just  on  that  cheap  basis.  But 
with  you  to  think  of,  and  pray  to — with  your  name  on 
my  new  boat — if  you'll  let  me  put  it  there — " 

"  Yes,  dear !  " 

"  Well — we'll  break  a  good  many  Hunnish  swords — 
you,  and  I — " 

"  But  I'm  not  going  to  submerge  my  character  alto 
gether  in  yours !  "  she  objected,  with  faint  righteous,  and 
Modernistic,  indignation.  "  I  want  to  help  you,  of 
course, — just  as  you've  helped  me — but  I  want  to  do 
something  myself,  too !  " 

He  kissed  her  for  that,  and  laughed  chokily.  ;<  You're 
a  good  soldier!  You  can  do  something  yourself — you 
can  do  a  great  deal — " 

"  Maybe  I  could  get  into  the  Red  Cross,"  she  inter 
rupted,  grimly  intent  on  details,  "  I've  had  a  course  in 


382  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

first  aid — and  they  wouldn't  turn  me  down,  as  they  did 
poor  Edna  Kling,  on  physical  grounds — " 

"  Perhaps  you  could  do  something  better  than  that. 
Our  government  is  graciously  permitting  young  ladies 
who  can  pay  for  a  motor-truck,  for  its  upkeep,  and  show 
an  income  of  at  least  $3,000  per  year,  to  pilot  supplies 
between  Havre  and  various  bases.  I  rather  imagine — " 

"  That  is  for  me !  "  she  interrupted ;  "  and,  when  you 
get  leaves  of  absence — I  suppose  they'll  give  you  leaves 
of  absence  once  in  a  while?" 

"  Yes — in  a  considerable  while !  " 

"  Well,  then,  you  could  come  over  and  be  my  assistant 
truck-man !  Clem,  think  how  gorgeous  that  will  be — my 
lover — and,  at  the  same  time  we'll  be  doing  something 
for—" 

"  For  true  Pacifism !  "  he  supplied. 

"Yes — I'll  take  your  word  for  it!  Kiss  me,  Clem — 
I'm  happy — I'm  going  to  do  something  for — for  Truth 
and  Freedom,  Clem — and  I'm  going  to  have  you !  It  just 
comes  over  me  how  completely  blessed — " 

"  Oh,  you  are  altogether — "  He  kissed  her.  " — the 
most — you  know,  you  remind  me  of  something  a  certain 
of  our  own  poets  has  said — Joyce  Kilmer — just  a  line — 
in  a  bit  of  free  verse  he  wrote  to  his  wife — before  he 
enlisted  as  a  common  soldier — I  think  it  goes: 

Her  soul  is  something  elusive,  whimsical,  tender,  wanton,  infantile, 

wise 
And  noble. 

Dear,  those  are  good  words — and  you  are  like  that !  " 

They  held  each  other  close  for  a  little  time,  but  she 
soon  broke  away  like  quicksilver,  like  quicksilver  recently 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  383 

warmed    and    excited :    "  How    we    talk — we've    talked, 
talked,  talked,  for  hours — but  now — 

"  Yes — we've  got  some  of  the  divine  afflatus — a  drink 
like  that  which  inspired  Matthew  Arnold's  '  Strayed 
Reveller  '— 

Faster,  faster, 

O  Circe,  Goddess, 

Let  the  wild,  thronging  train, 

The  bright  procession 

Of  eddying  forms, 

Sweep  through  the  soul! " 

Clotilde  admitted  enthusiastically,  but  with  faint  im 
patience,  too:  "  Yes,  dear — that's  beautiful — and  true  as 
it  applies  to  us — but — ' 

"There's  vers  libre  for  you — there's  real  Imagism!" 
enthused  the  Corporal,  his  stimulated  soul  full  of  a  new 
eddying  of  forms.  "  In  that,  and  in  half  a  dozen  other 
things,  the  mid-Victorian  produced  about  the  best  free 
verse  and  Imagistic  poetry  so  far  written — before  Mod 
ernism  even  discovered  the  names !  Do  you  know,  dear, 
I  think  a  good  deal  of  Modernism  is  precisely  like  that 
— it  invents  a  patois,  applies  it  to  things  quite  ancient 
and  familiar,  and  bellows  about  its  discovery!  " 

"  Yes,  my  critic !  I  confess  I  got  some  such  idea  from 
talking  with  my  father,  old  Henry  Hooghtyling — but, 
now,  dear — " 

"  And  the  '  Strayed  Revellers  '  idea,  too — that  isn't  so 
bad  as  applied  to  us — to  me,  at  least,"  the  Corporal  pro 
ceeded;  "and  to  thousands  of  young  folks  like  us!  My 
life — it  amounted  to  having  a  good  time,  a  damned 
drunken  riotous  sort  of  a  good  time — what  did  I  know 
about  the  Truth  and  Freedom  I  prattled  about  between 


384  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

cocktails — between  '  parties,'  and  sickly  little  love-affairs  ? 
There's  something  in  universal  military  training — and 
something  more  in  a  universal  conscription  of  both  men 
and  women  around  the  ages  of  twenty-one,  collecting 
them  and  setting  them  to  work  for  the  benefit  of  their 
own  souls  and  society  at  large — making  low  and  high, 
rich  and  poor,  rub  elbows  for  a  while — giving  them  some 
sense  of  responsibility,  some  feeling  for  their  social  unit 
— it  would  be  especially  good  for  all  the  young  hopefuls 
that,  as  conditions  are,  have  nothing  to  do  but  riot  around, 
getting  drunk  and  diseased  in  body  and  mind — " 

"  That's  splendid!  "  Clotilde  was  especially  emphatic 
because  special  emphasis  seemed  to  be  needed  to  stop  the 
steady  flow  of  his  philosophy.  "  I  don't  want  to  inter 
rupt  you,  dear,"  she  added,  seeing  that  he  was  pretty  well 
interrupted;  "but  we  can  just  as  well  talk  as  we  go 
down — come!"  She  rose,  pulling  him  by  the  arm. 

"  As  we  go  down?  "  he  repeated  feebly. 

"  Yes,  dear — I  think  we'd  better  start,  now.  It's 
nearly  four  o'clock."  She  was  eminently  practical,  if 
very  much  in  earnest,  and  she  showed  him  her  wrist- 
watch  to  prove  it.  "  By  starting  now  we  can  get  down 
in  time  to  catch  the  early  train  for  New  York — and  we 
ought  to  get  the  early  train — for,  of  course,  I  want  to 
see  about  my  motor-truck,  you  know — and  we'll  have 
to  get  married — and,  oh,  there'll  be  a  lot  of  other  details 
to  arrange — we  really  shouldn't  waste  another  minute — 
especially  as  we  can  just  as  well  talk  while  we're  walking. 
There,  give  me  your  hand !  " 

The  Corporal,  in  something  of  a  maze,  gave  her  his 
hand  and  helped  her  up  to  the  cliff-top,  at  the  height 
of  their  shoulders  behind  them. 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  385 

"  Now,  dear,"  she  continued,  urging  him  competently 
toward  the  Inn,  "  we'll  just  fold  our  blankets,  and  leave 
them  as  we  found  them,  and  hurry  right  along." 

The  Corporal  showed  signs  of  insubordination  while 
he  stood,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  watching  Clo- 
tilde's  swift  redisposition  of  the  blankets :  "  But — I  say- 
old  friend — don't  we  eat,  or  anything?  I  thought  you 
said  something  about  a  can  of  beans — I  never  thought  I'd 
come  to  beans  for  breakfast — but  before  we  start  on  that 
long  hike,  you  know — a  bean  or  two  might  help !  " 

"  We  simply  haven't  time,  dear!  "  she  informed  him: 
"  we'll  just  have  to  sandwich  in  our  eating — as  we  will 
our  legal  marriage.  We  have  no  time  for  anything  but 
just  talking  and — getting  toward  France!  Why,  what 
kind  of  a  soldier  are  you  to  think  of  eating  when  we've 
got  so  many  important  things  to  do !  " 

"  But  I'm  on  leave,"  suggested  the  Corporal. 
"Well,  I'm  not — I've  just  enlisted!  Come  on!" 
She  annexed  him  by  linking  her  arm  in  his,  and  started 
him  off,  in  spite  of  his  tendency  to  hang  back.  "  Now, 
go  on — talk !  "  she  ordered  him.  "  I  love  to  hear  you 
talk,  dear — you  do  it  well,  when  you're  stirred  up — and 
you've  collected  a  lot  of  dope  on  important  things  that  I 
haven't  even  thought  about.  So  please  go  on — you  were 
talking  about  the  universal  conscription  of  youth — not  so 
much  for  military  training — as  for  educational  purposes, 
wasn't  it?" 

"  Yes — and  to  keep  'em  out  of  mischief — especially 
disorderly  rioting  and  revelling  around  before  they've  got 
their  bearings — and  to  give  'em  a  taste  of  democracy," 
admitted  the  Corporal :  "  but,  say,  Clo' — you  tornado — 
if  we're  going  right  to  New  York,  and  expect  to  get 


386  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

married  there,  won't  we  have  to  stand  in  line — waste  a 
lot  of  time — waiting  for  a  license  ?  " 

'  Yes — as  I  said,  it  will  be  an  inconvenience — but  it 
can  be  arranged  there  easier  than  in  Woodbridge,  dear," 
she  assured  him.  "  Now  don't  bother  your  good  head 
about  practical  details — I  happen  to  know  something 
about  our  barbarous  marriage  laws — learned  about  them 
in  the  course  of  that  Greenwich  Village  rioting  you  were 
just  denouncing.  You  can  leave  things  to  me — maybe 
one  trouble  with  this  war  is  that  the  women  haven't  got 
into  it  enough — they're  infinitely  more  practical  than  you 
men,  by  and  large — and  war's  certainly  a  practical  matter 
— even  though  it's  nice  to  hear  you  philosophize  about  it. 
— By  the  way,  do  you  think  this  war  is  really  going  to 
change  things — ideas,  conditions?  I  mean,  won't  every 
thing  just  fall  right  back  to  where  it  was  before?  I've 
heard  somebody — maybe  Carey  Beemis — say  that  the 
war  wouldn't  leave  a  ripple  in  human  nature — in  funda 
mental  human  conditions :  but,  at  least,  I  don't  think  you 
will  fall  back  to  what  you  were  before — " 

"  Change  things — it  will  change  things,  from  top  to 
bottom,  as  no  war  in  all  history's  series  of  world-chang 
ing  wars  ever  began  to  do ! "  decreed  the  Corporal,  re 
acting  at  once,  and  violently. 

"  I  thought  perhaps  you'd  have  an  opinion  on  that, 
dear—" 

"  No  man,  no  human  being,  who's  been  touched  by  this 
war,  is  going  to  be  the  same  after  it — and  as  for  the 
larger  changes — "  The  Corporal  waved  his  arm  across 
the  horizon.  "  Why,  just  for  one  little  detail,  Wilson's 
recognition  of  the  importance  of  the  aims  of  the  Bol- 
sheviki  means  more  to  this  country  than  Thomas  Jeffer- 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  387 

son's  appropriation  of  the  French  Revolution's  Liberte, 
Egalite,  Fraternite,  ever  did !  No  matter  what  becomes 
of  the  Bolsheviki — of  that  astonishing  Trotsky,  who  used 
to  live  up  in  the  Bronx — of  Lenine,  who  may,  or  may 
not,  have  taken  German  money.  For  myself,  I  think  the 
history  of  the  world  will  be  roughly  divided  into  two 
parts  by  this  greatest  of  all  conflicts,  both  between  nations 
and  ideals — international  civilization  will  begin  with  the 
triumph  of  the  Russo-American  aims — a  triumph  perhaps 
rather  in  the  minds  of  the  peoples  of  the  world  than 
on  battlefields — it  may  well  be  that  the  real  conflict  will 
begin  after  German  militarism  has  been  crushed.  By  the 
way,  it's  queer  that  we  damn  the  poor  Russians  so  thor 
oughly  when  the  clearest  statement  of  their  war-aims  is 
practically  our  own !  " 

"  But  I  thought  the  Russians  were  practically  Pacifists, 
dear?" 

"  Oh,  Pacifists,  Militarists — we've  got  to  get  new  terms 
or  re-define  the  old  ones — I  call  myself  a  Pacifist,  the 
only  sort  of  an  American  Pacifist  fit  to  look  intelligent 
human  beings  in  the  face — and  yet — often  enough  I've 
wished  I  could  turn  my  old  coffee-mill  on  the  fools  who 
mewl  Pacifism  in  restaurants,  and  draw  Save-Your-Skin 
cartoons,  and  write  clever  little  carte-blanches  for  the  con 
tinued  progress  of  the  German  juggernaut,  including  its 
special  equipment  for  making  sausage  meat  of  women 
and  babies — Oh,  to  Hell  with  our  American  Pacifists! — 
whatever  excuse  the  bedeviled  Russians  may  have !  Fu 
ture  generations  will  marvel  at  them — for  myself,  I've 
sent  my  regards  to  them  on  a  westward  gale,  from  five 
miles  high — I've  spit  into  the  wind,  and  said :  '  Carry  that 
to  the  face  of  some  greasy  economist  who's  trying  to  oil 


388  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

the  German  war-machine  with  debauched  American  ideals 
of  freedom,  justice — 

"  Really,  Clem,  I  don't  think  you  need  worry  about 
them  so  much.  They're  changing — a  little.  In  place  of 
the  old  '  Masses,'  for  instance,  Greenwich  Village  Paci 
fists  are  starting  a  new  paper,  called  '  The  Liberator,' 
which  finds  some  good  in  the  war — along  the  Russian 
lines  you  were  just  mentioning.  At  least,  they  no  longer 
consider  it  absolutely  negligible,  uninteresting— 

"  Oh,  yes — I  suppose  anybody  with  a  morsel  of  healthy 
gray  matter  must  have  come  out  of  that  juvenile  attitude 
by  this  time — I  suppose  I'm  just  raving — but  you'll  have 
to  stand  for  it — because  the  stimulus  of  having  you  to 
talk  to  is  largely  responsible  for  my  raving,  dear.  And 
.they're  still  around,  the  tribe  of  grunters  are,  too!  I 
hesitated  about  punching  the  face  of  one  of  the  pompa- 
doured,  Russian-faced  fools  I  passed  holding  forth  in 
Bryant  Park  on  the  way  to  Grand  Central  Station — Why 
bother  about  the  cheap  swine?  I  asked.  But,  thanks 
to  you,  I  won't  feel  that  way  as  I  go  back — if  I  pass  one, 
as  I  probably  shall,  I'll  stop  long  enough  for  an  argu 
ment  with  him — by  God,  I  will !  Sending  little  tokens 
from  France,  even  when  there's  a  west  gale  and  you're 
in  the  neighborhood  of  five  miles  high,  is  a  bit  too 
uncertain !  " 

"  I  don't  think  you  will,  dear — I  think  it  will  be 
much  better  for  you  just  to  keep  spitting  into  the  wind— 
at  five  miles  high.  Of  course  I'll  be  with  you  when  you 
go  through  New  York  again,  and  I  shan't  let  you  get 
into  violent  arguments  with  any  pigs — who  might  have 
the  law  on  their  sides.  The  Anarchists  are  especially 
eager  to  appeal  to  the  law,  dear,  although  the  Socialists 


STRAYED  REVELLERS  389 

are  almost  as  strong  for  it,  even  while  advising  the  break 
ing  of  it  on  the  side." 

"Oh,  of  course  you're  right,"  he  admitted;  "maybe 
they're  a  minority  that  helps  to  keep  the  majority  from 
losing  its  head — scum  that  keeps  the  pot  from  boiling 
over — they  can  be  skimmed  off  and  thrown  into  the  gar 
bage  pail  when  their  usefulness  is  ended." 

"  I  hope  you  haven't  turned  Aristocrat,  Clem !  " 
"  Well — I  have,  to  some  extent.  There's  a  new  sort 
of  Aristocracy  over  there,"  he  ruminated,  dawdling 
along :  "  a  young  Aristocracy  of  red  blood  and  live  brains 
— the  sort  of  Aristocracy  that's  going  to  run  things  after 
this  war  is  over.  Among  the  best  types  of  it  I  can  think 
of  are  those  English  and  Canadian  volunteers  who 
charged  at  Neuve  Chapelle — those  Frenchmen  who  said, 
in  the  flaming  Hell  of  Verdun:  f Its  ne  passeront  pas!' 
I've  thought  perhaps  the  best  test  of  it  is  how  a  man 
measures  his  convenience,  his  life,  up  against — not  Free 
dom,  Justice,  Liberty,  Truth,  so  much,  perhaps,  as  up 
against  a  kind  of  simple  human  dignity — the  dignity  and 
integrity  of  the  individual  and  grouped  human  will. 
Those  Aristocrats,  with  plenty  of  born  aristocrats  as  well 
as  many  times  as  many  born  proles  among  them,  are 
going  over  by  the  thousand  in  our  new  armies — fellows 
with  solid  self-respect  and  in  a  kind  of  temper,  a  disgust, 
a  disdain,  a  rage  for  having  it  over  with,  that  makes  them 
deadly  to  the  Teutonic  idea — the  continuous  running  of 
the  world  on  the  Hell-fire,  rape,  robbery,  and  murder 
plan.  At  bottom  it's  just  a  kind  of  dignity,  an  aroused 
selfhood,  a  kind  of  instinctive  deep  objection  to  having 
life  or  death  or  anything  crammed  down  their  throats  by 
any  power  except  their  own  wills, — individual  and  com- 


390  STRAYED  REVELLERS 

bined — a  demand  both  that  they  boss  themselves,  and  that 
everybody  who  is  of  age  and  mentally  competent  be  al 
lowed  the  same  privilege." 

"  That  sounds,"  mentioned  Clotilde,  "  like  rank 
Anarchism." 

"  It  is — although  the  name's  filthied  by  men  who  care 
more  for  their  individual  stomachs  and  unwashed  hides 
than  they  do  for  No-Rule.  And  it's  Socialism,  too, — 
since  they  have  a  regard  for  the  social  will,  as  well  as 
for  their  own  individual  wills — even  though  the  name 
*  Socialist '  has  been  so  dirtied  by  men  whose  social  in 
stincts  stop  with  the  attainment  of  personal  safety  and 
a  two-cent  drop  in  the  price  of  soup-meat,  not  to  mention 
the  dirtying  done  by  rank  pro-Germans,  that  real  Social 
ists  will  probably  take  a  new  name  after  the  war.  But 
these  new  Anarchist-Socialist-Aristocrats — Anarchists  in 
upholding  the  dignity  and  freedom  of  every  human  being, 
Socialists  in  modifying  that  demand  by  the  ideal  of  uni 
versal  human  brotherhood  and  the  will  of  the  social  unit, 
Aristocrats  in  that  they  include  the  noblest  blood  of  every 
nation — counting  nobility  both  as  brain-power  to  see  far 
and  straight  and  as  nerve-power  to  offer  life  itself  for 
the  ideal  envisioned — these  fellows  constitute  a  new  order 
of  nobility,  as  I  see  it — the  nobility  that  is  saving  civili 
zation  today,  and  to  which  civilization  will  belong  after 
it  has  been  saved !  " 

"  Oh,  my  dear — let's  walk  faster!  "  said  Clotilde. 


THE  END 


PELLE   THE    CONQUEROR 
By  MARTIN  A.  NEXO 

A  tetralogy  that  pictures  a  modern  labor 
leader  as  "Jean-Christophe"  pictures  a  musi 
cal  genius.  Each  volume  has  a  complete 
interest.  New  edition,  in  two  volumes. 
Each,  $2.00  net. 
[BOYHOOD 

y   i     T  j         Translated  by  Jessie  Muir. 
[APPRENTICESHIP 

Translated  by  Bernard  Miall. 

[THE  GREAT  STRUGGLE 

\r   i    TT  '          Translated  by  Bernard  Miall. 

VoL  A    DAYBREAK 

Translated  by  Jessie  Muir. 

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"The  book  is  world-wide  in  its  significance.  It 
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— New  York  Tribune. 

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without  a  sense  of  quickened  emotion  and  enlarged  < 
vision." — The  Nation. 

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century  has  so  far  produced." 

— Manchester  Guardian. 

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Iliad  of  the  poor." — London  Daily  Chronicle. 

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PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


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